The Firebird's Song: Book II of the Firebird Saga
by Darth Marrs
Summary: Hard times lead to hard choices. What's more important? Freedom, or fate? Love, or death? Harry Potter stands on the edge of a precipice, and he is not sure if the right move is to turn and fight, or fall.
1. Once Upon A Train to London

Reviews to the last chapter of Book I are available in my forums. I will continue to use the same forum for all future review responses. Also, there will be a little time-jumping at the first, but it will play out, promise. Thank you for reading, and welcome to book II.

* * *

**The Firebird's Song: Book II of the Firebird Saga**

A Harry Potter Fan fiction by Darth Marrs

Note: This is a direct continuation of Firebird's Son. If you haven't read the first, this will make no sense to you. Additionally, if you tried and did not like the first, you will undoubtedly not like this one. More comments are available in the Firebird Trilogy forum linked on my profile.

Standard Disclaimers apply. I don't own Harry Potter or his world. Plotting and OCs are mine, yes, but not much else. This story was not written for profit.

* * *

**Chapter One: Once Upon A Train to London**

Harold Fischer was just an ordinary bloke heading into London from his flat in Hounslow to meet his daughter and her latest boyfriend on the first day of August. At forty eight, overweight and balding, Harold accepted that his best days were behind him with a type of resigned cynicism that made him a rather dull dinner conversationalist. Worse yet, Harold was smart enough, and self-aware enough, to know that this tendency toward pessimism often ended up confirming itself like a sick and twisted self-fulfilling prophecy. Because he expected the worst, he was rarely disappointed, but even more rarely happy. "You're dead inside, Harold," his ex-wife said as she walked out of their home and his life. His last three attempts at dating just seemed to confirm he was meant to be alone.

Still, he did love his little girl, who at twenty years of age and two hundred pounds in weight was neither little nor a girl, and her invitations to meet were few enough that he would gladly hop on the rail to see her. In a real sense those brief visits were the only thing he had worth living for.

He pulled out his book and started reading with a tired sigh when he happened to overhear a very odd conversation from a couple sitting in front of him, hunched down so he could not see them. He really did not mean to eavesdrop, but when the girl said, "Do you think they'll kill us still?" he couldn't help but lean forward to listen more attentively.

Harold's urge to listen grew even more intense when the teen next to her said, "If they find us, I think they will."

Silence fell for a moment, before the girl said, "I'm hungry. Do you have anything to eat?"

Harold heard a rustling of cloth and then the crinkle of paper. "Here," the boy said. "Last one, make it count."

"Will we be able to eat in London?" The girl's voice was rather high-pitched and ethereal, as if she were speaking on the edge of a whisper all the time. Harold recognized she was attempting to be quiet, but he imagined it was rather her normal tone—it was the voice of someone who was very young.

"Yeah, I think so."

Silence followed again, before, "Do you regret bonding with me, Harry, knowing they want to kill us both now?"

Suddenly Harold's mind started soaring with all the possibilities of this statement. He wanted very much to stand and take a look at them to see if the girl was Pakistani or not, because in his imagination they were a young, star-crossed pair of lovers going against the rules of her family, and fleeing so her father and brothers didn't slaughter them both, as had happened recently in the news. Honour killings, he thought they were called.

The boy said, "I was already a target. I can't regret it."

"Where will we go?" the girl asked again. In his imagination, the girl was looking at her young lover with a lost, hopeless expression.

"I'm not sure," the boy admitted. "I thought about maybe going up to Longbottom Manor, but as much as I like Neville, I'm not sure his Gran would take us in."

"It would be a terrible imposition," the girl agreed.

_Longbottom?_ Harold thought.

"Plus there's mum's message," the boy continued. "I have to find Ollivander, wherever he is."

A brief pause, and then in a trembling voice, the girl said, "I'm scared, Harry," she said softy. "I don't want to die like Mum did."

Harold leaned back a little and discovered his eyes were moist. The girl sounded so very… _heartbroken_.

But then the boy said something that shattered Harold's illusions. He spoke softly himself, just a touch above a whisper, while the sound of rustling fabric made Harold think the two were hugging each other. "It wasn't too bad, you know. Dying, I mean. When Voldemort killed me, there wasn't any pain at all, just a flash of green light. And then I was…someplace else."

"Tell me."

"It was like I was on a mountain top between the clouds and heaven. Everything was clear and bright and perfect, and Mum was there waiting for me. She talked to me and touched my cheek, and she was _real_. I didn't really want to come back, not if it meant leaving her."

"It sounds peaceful," the girl whispered. "My mum was screaming when they killed her; they made me watch. I hope that when I die, she'll be there waiting for me."

Harold leaned back in his seat, trying to make sense of the impossible conversation. _Voldemort?_ What kind of Pakistani name was Voldemort? And the boy died and came back? How did that work? Harold looked around the train, a sneaking suspicion growing in his mind that he was being had. Were there cameras around the train? Would he show up on the telly in a few weeks as the fat, bald, gullible man falling for a silly teenage prank?

Suddenly the girl said, "Harry, what's wrong?"

"They found us," Harry said stiffly.

"How do you know?"

"I saw it, just now."

"But…you don't have a nose bleed."

"They're coming right now!" The boy's voice rose a little in concern. At that very moment, the door from the next car up opened and two women walked through. They were attractive women to Harold's eyes, with long, auburn hair on one, and shorter blonde hair on the other. Both wore rather poorly fitted floral-print dresses and, even stranger, thick black-leather dusters and heavy boots.

By this point, Harold was absolutely sure there was a camera in the train, because the boy jumped up from his seat, pointed a wooden stick and shouted, "_Stupefy!"_

Of course, nothing happened—no strange lights or sound effects. Harold was sure that would be added later in post-production. And yet the first of the two women flew back against the wall with a grunt. It was, Harold thought, a masterful performance by what had to have been a professional stuntwoman.

"What's going on?" a man a few feet down said as the boy continued shouting "_Stupefy"_ at the remaining woman.

"Must be filming or summat," Harold speculated aloud.

Since that explanation made the most sense, people did not immediately panic, but instead sat back to watch what they thought was a show. The suspension of disbelief, however, was shattered brutally when the boy screamed in pain and suddenly flipped out and over his seat at an impossible angle, hitting Harold on the side of the head with one worn sneaker before landing with a grunt and an audible snap of bone in the centre of the aisle. People watched in growing panic as the boy raised himself from the floor clutching an obviously broken left arm while blood ran from a black spot on his right shoulder. From his knees, he raised his wand with that weakened right arm and screamed, "_Confringo maxima!"_

The approaching woman's sneer turned into a wild look of fright before something slammed into her midsection and threw her back against the far wall where her partner waited; a split second later the world turned white as the whole connector side of the train disappeared in the deafening, blinding flash of an explosion.

Harold was aware of screams; of the screech of horribly twisting metal and then a stomach-churning feeling of falling and spinning. Harold cried out himself, though his voice was lost in the screams of dying metal just like everyone else's. When movement stopped, it did so with shocking finality. He felt his body slammed hard into biting, cutting metal. His head struck something that left him seeing stars, and his ears roared with the echo of the inexplicable explosion that tore their commuter train apart.

It took several moments before he could move; when he did he winced at the sharp pain in his side. Looking down, he saw a deep gouge where he landed on a twisted, now bloody shard of metal. People were crying around him, looking for loved ones or just trying to figure out what to do and what happened.

Looking around the smoking ruin, he spotted the boy. He was in his mid to late teens, with shaggy black hair and green or blue eyes. He held his broken arm to his chest and looked about him with such a lost, confused expression Harold wondered briefly if the boy even knew what he had done.

"Harry?"

Harold turned and saw the girl for the first time. Far from being Pakistani, this girl was in fact pale and blonde—almost white-blonde—with large, protruding eyes. She stumbled through the side-turned railcar toward the boy, showing no sign that she was hurt.

"I did this," the boy stuttered, clearly in shock. "God, Luna, I did this!"

"Well, yes, but if you hadn't I'm fairly certain they would have killed us."

"I hurt all these people!"

"Yes, I'm sorry for them," the girl said. "But if we stay and try to help, they will catch us. We need to leave now. How do we get out?"

The boy looked around the stunned, confused faces before he raised the stick and said, "_Bombarda!_"

Harold fell back as the roof of the train disappeared in a blast of heat. It was a more controlled explosion than the first, but still made everyone in the train scream in terror that they were all about to die.

When the smoke cleared, though, there was a man-sized hole in the roof of the car. The injured boy and his young girlfriend stumbled through into the daylight first, followed by the others.

Harold lay back down, feeling rather dizzy and lightheaded. Not more than a minute later, the air filled with pops as women suddenly appeared as if by magic, all clad in long black trench-coats. They brandished sticks just like the boy did, and immediately started pointing them at people. Harold watched from his prone position as people's panicked, terrified faces went suddenly, inexplicably blank.

_This wasn't a movie. They're doing something to those people's minds!_ Desperately afraid, Harold closed his eyes and lay perfectly still.

Whatever he feared never happened, and moments later the air was filled with pops once more. When he dared to peek, the strangely clad women were gone, and survivors were slowly working themselves toward the hole in the side-ways ceiling of the car. A pair of paramedics rushed in through the gap and saw Harold almost immediately.

"Where are you hurt?" one of the young men said.

"M' side … got stabbed by the train when it turned over," Harold said. He sounded strange to his own ears—his words slurred. "I saw it all. The women came n' made everyone else forget, but I remember."

"Well, you just keep a hold on that thought, sir," the paramedic said.

~~Firebird~~

~~Firebird~~

When Harold Fischer woke up, he was surprised at how very clear-headed he felt. When he woke up after having his appendix removed, it was to a feeling of muddle-headedness that stayed with him for days. Now, though, he felt only pain. In fact, there was a great deal of pain from his side, as well as the pinch of an IV in his arm, and the steady, rhythmical beeping of monitoring equipment around him. He appeared to be in a semi-private hospital room.

"Ah, good, you're awake," a male voice said. Harold turned his head with some stiffness and saw a man who was only a few years younger than he was, but otherwise looked completely different. Where Harold was overweight with barely-there brown hair, this man stood tall and strong, with a flat stomach under a white button-down shirt, and black sweater-vest with a luxurious head of dark hair touched by grey at the temples. He wore his vest suspiciously like a police uniform, though it had no insignia or patches.

"Where am I?"

"Charing Cross Hospital," the officer said. "You're lucky to be alive, Mr Fischer."

"Tell me about it," Harold said. "Did they catch the kid that did it?"

"Did what, Mr Fischer?"

"Blew up the train, 'course," Harold said. "Thought it was a joke, or show, or summat. He just stood up and started shoutin' at the two birds in the leather coats, like they was playing or summat, then one does something and the boy goes flying, arm broke sure as I'm here. He gets up and shouts something, like 'Bomba maxi' or something, and then it all just goes pear-shaped."

"Was he alone?"

"No, he was with this big-eyed blonde girl. They was talking 'bout people being after them, and being scared. Mentioned Moldy Wart or what have you, can't remember for sure. I thought they was just playing me, then those women showed up. And after he and 'ter girl got out, more women came. Pointed sticks at people and made 'em forget but not me. They must 'a thought I was dead or summat, missed me completely."

The man nodded. "Shouldn't you be takin' notes?" Harold asked.

"No, because I was never here, and if you're smart, Mr Fischer, you'll never mention this to anyone else, or those women will come back, and they will steal your mind."

Harold's eyes widened. "You know 'bout 'em, don't you?"

"Indeed I do. And I know they're very, very dangerous. Thank you for your statement; your daughter has been informed and should be here shortly. The doctors will give you something for the pain. Remember; do not mention this to anyone, Mr Fischer. The Crown cannot guarantee your safety if you do."

Wide-eyed and numb from everything that had happened so far, Harold could only nod. "Okay, then."

"Right, well, good day to you. I wish you a speedy recovery." And with that, the man was gone.

Harold would never see the man again, but he did keep his promise. When his daughter arrived, crying in concern for him, Harold smiled happily at her and said, "Alright, luv, no worries. Daddy'll be okay."

Surprisingly, he was right. The experience on the train made Harold realize, over the following months, that there were still some mysteries left in the world; some magic that was beyond his knowledge. Strangely, the knowledge made him happy; and his happiness made him more pleasant to be around. Though prior to the wreck he would never have believed it could happen, he eventually found a woman who did not mind his weight problem or thinning hair, just as he didn't mind her perpetual cheerfulness and rotund figure, and for the remainder of his mortal life, he managed to find happiness for himself where before he had given up entirely.

However, Sir Marcus Fletchley, formerly with Her Majesty's Royal Air Force and now on special detached duty with the Security Service, did not care one whit about Harold Fischer's happiness. What he cared about was that a witch-born blew up a train, killing three people and injuring almost a hundred more, and his daughter's friend Harry Potter was likely involved.

He removed his radio and said, "Mr Fischer confirmed Trickster involvement. Looks like our subject might have been involved directly. According to the witness, he may have a broken arm."

The voice on the other end said, "Roger that. We have the picture—we'll begin the sweeps now."

"Remember, keep everyone off the official channels," Sir Marcus said.

"Aye, sir. Out."

Sir Marcus replaced the radio into his shoulder clip and continued at a brisk pace out of the large, sprawling hospital. He nodded politely to people in the elevator or halls, but said nothing until he reached the black Range Rover in the hospital car park on the ground level of the building.

Edwin Granger sat in the passenger-side seat typing into a laptop computer tied into the Rover's secure communications link. He wore the same vest, shirt and slacks as Sir Marcus. "So?"

Sir Marcus climbed in and nodded. "It was Potter alright. Sounds like they attacked him on the train and he went overboard defending himself. He probably caused that wreck."

Edwin grimaced and shook his head. "Bad business, that. What are we going to do when we find him?"

"Before he was responsible for killing three innocent bystanders, I was going to help him," Sir Marcus said darkly. "Now? Now I might shoot the boy myself."

"Justine would never forgive you," Edwin said, speaking of Sir Marcus's teenage daughter, who herself just happened to be a witch. "And neither would Hermione, for that matter."

"That alone might be reason enough to shoot him. Come on, let's get moving."

~~Firebird~~

~~Firebird~~

"Harry, you've hurt more than just your arm," Luna Potter neé Lovegood whispered as the two of them stumbled into the nearest corner mart. "I can see a curse on your shoulder!"

"I know," her husband of the past two days whispered. "I can feel it. Just not sure what we can do about it."

It was difficult to walk with the throbbing pain from the curse in his shoulder, which only made the broken arm that much harder to bear as well. The South Asian man behind the counter watched the two of them as they made their way back to the loo. Luna walked in with him and closed the door. With it locked, she removed her shrunken trunk from the pocket of her rather industrial-style dress and activated the enlargement charm with a tap of her wand.

"What are you doing?" Harry asked.

"Pain potion—don't you have a potion kit from Madam Pomfrey for your visions?"

"Oh, yeah. Good thinking."

She found what she was looking for and handed him a phial of potion, which he took without hesitation. She then removed a large book called _Home Remedies for the Every Day Witch_ by Aesclepia Gale. "Can you take off your shirt?"

"No," Harry admitted.

With a nod, Luna performed a simple switching spell, only she switched his shirt for air. When the curse was exposed, she sucked in a breath and started to flip quickly through the book. Finding what she wanted, she held her wand over his shoulder and said with careful enunciation: "_Ostendo sum vestri penitus."_

"What was that?"

"A diagnosis charm for curses," Luna said, a moment before her eyes watered. "Harry, I can't heal this. It's a Class IV dark curse. It's going to continue to burn into you until it destroys your magic and kills you. I can't…I don't know what to do."

"Can you fix my arm at least?"

With a nod, she looked back through the book, found the appropriate charm, and pointed her wand at Harry. "_Brachium Emendo_!"

Even with the pain potion, the sudden setting of his bone made Harry cry out and slam into the wall, where he slid to the floor gasping. His forearm looked black and blue, but he could tell just from the angle that the spell worked. "That hurt," he admitted in a strained voice.

"Thank Morgana it actually worked," Luna muttered. "I tried it once on a dog I found with a broken leg last year—it actually vanished the bone entirely. You have to have a clear picture in your head and… Oh Harry."

She slid down the wall to sit next to him and buried her face in her hands. "I don't know what to do! We need to get you to Saint Mungo's, but I know if we go, they'll capture us. I just don't know what to do."

"We'll work something out," Harry said. "We have to. I've already died once; not too eager to do it again, you know? Help me with my shirt, please."

She did as he asked, helping slide the shirt back over his wounded shoulder. He started to stand, but his left leg caved in. Luna leapt up and caught him before he fell to the floor again. "Thanks," he said, white-faced. Luna managed to unlock the bathroom door and swung it open, only to find two men in three-piece Muggle suits and ties on the other side, both with guns in their hands pointed at the two teens.

"Oh, hello," she said, startled.

"Hands over your heads, now!" the agent with chocolate-coloured skin said.

"Oh, I don't think Harry should do that," Luna said in a reasonable tone, as if talking to someone about the weather. "He's hurt quite badly in his shoulder, you see. I suppose I could raise my hands, but I'm afraid he'll fall if I do."

"I said get your hands over your heads!" the man said again.

"Are you going to kill us, then?" Luna asked, still in the absent voice. "I suppose dying by a Muggle gun is better than being stabbed in the stomach. Is it faster to die with a bullet in your brain, Harry?"

"Don't know," Harry said, panting now from the increasing pain. "Luna, I can't…"

He then fell forward, with Luna desperately trying to hold him upright as the two Security Service agents watched.

* * *

sp

sp

**Author's Note**: I want to once again say a very special thanks as always to Teufel1987, JR and Miles for beta reading. The three of them have created a great system that works well for my writing style, and to a marvelous job not just of editing, but also pointing out the many WTF? breaks that sneak in. For this and the other stories they've beta read for me, I am in their debt.


	2. Back Up A Step

A/N: Chap 1 review responses are in the Firebird forum like normal. Thank you for reading.

* * *

**Chapter Two: Back Up A Step**

Twenty-two days before Harry blew up the train to London, he sat back from his OWL revision guide for Potions with a tired sigh. Professor Lupin had kindly handed out revision guides for all the OWL subjects not just to Harry, but all of his friends as well, and those guides were what he used when revising over the summer. It had been the only thing keeping him sane since his forced imprisonment at Number 4 Privet Drive. Merlin knew his relatives were so terrified of the "freaks" that they could barely look at him. This had the advantage of giving him some peace, but it also made him quite lonely.

With another put-upon sigh, he stored the potions materials, and for the hundredth time, considered the notes he took from his mum's book. On his small composite-wood ASDA desk lay a stack of parchment from his trunk, and his mother's book. On the parchment were lines of notes comprised of the 7th and 31st letters of the 140,000 word book. Other than the first lines of the message where she said she loved him, the rest of the message was actually a more complicated cipher that took him a week to figure out.

How his mother managed to write a book that read normally while still encoding all the messages she did left Harry humbled, and feeling a little stupid, if he were to be honest with himself. He doubted he could have done the same if his life depended on it.

More astounding than the technical means she used to convey her message was the message itself. It didn't read like an enigmatic prophecy or life-changing message from the grave. It read as if she's simply written him a letter.

_Wands are the key, Harry. For over a thousand years witches have been using wands to limit and control a wizard's magic. But no one has ever realized before that the wands are also killing out the wizards themselves. Study the Domesday Book in the Ministry and you will see that male birth rates have been declining every century since wands were first introduced. If things continue like this, the witch-born will go extinct entirely._

_You are my solution, Harry. During my studies for this book, Professor Flitwick let me read the grimoire of Rowena Ravenclaw. Not only was she an aether, but so was her daughter. More importantly, so was her daughter's bond-mate. Before Helena Ravenclaw fled for what is now Albania, Rowena studied her and her bonded, one of the few aether wizards ever conceived, Darius Black. His mother was burned for practicing dark arts when the Sabbat learned he was an aether, but it was Rowena's notes of his birth that allowed me to create you._

_Harry, when he and Rowena bonded, there was no drop of his magic. Do you understand? Rowena studied it for almost ten years, and determined that if two heterosexual actuating aethers bond, the aether aspect of their magic will offset the bond. Unfortunately, the Sabbat discovered Helena's secret. Though she loved her daughter dearly, as a Dame of the Sabbat Rowena had no choice but to obey the Sabbat and send a Dark Wizard to kill either her own daughter, or her daughter's bondmate. In his madness, the Bloody Baron slaughtered them both._

_I hope you understand what you must do when the Sabbat starts pressuring you to bond, as I know they will. I've made sure you have every gift magic could give you to help you on your way, but by bonding with an aether first, you'll ensure you keep those gifts. I just wish that were enough by itself. I've seen so much blood, though, I fear it won't be. You must find the secret to wandcraft—why wands are weakening wizards so badly._

_Only one person can help you. His name is Garrick Ollivander, and he is the only man still alive to have learned wandcraft. He learned at the hands of the Russian apostate Gregorovitch, shortly before Gregorovitch was assassinated by his own coven a century ago. Ollivander was later captured by Voldemort who wanted a wand that would serve the Dark Lord's magic. It says something about Ollivander's character that, despite being tortured for years, he never gave Voldemort what he wanted._

_Ollivander should have gone into hiding the night I died. However, I've seen him in my dreams. I know you will find him, and he will teach you what you need. _

_You are not just my answer to the failing birth rates, but to the prejudice of the Covens as well. You will make a coven out of the very types of witches the other covens hate, and all the Muggleborn and Half-bloods in England will flock to your banner._

_There is one more thing I must tell you, my son. Do not trust Delia Griffin. In school I spoke openly about my distaste of the covens and my theories about what the shackling of male magic was doing to the population. She pulled me out of class and threatened my life if I didn't shut up. It was she who proposed my bonding your father—not for our happiness, but for a trade. If I bonded James, she would support my having him to myself so long as I kept quiet. James was powerful, and there were already rumours in the Sabbat that he would found a new coven. Delia did not want the Potter name or the clan tithe to leave the Griffin Coven, and this was her answer._

_I did shut up, but I never stopped trying to change things. I gathered friends and colleagues together to form a group I called the Order of the Phoenix. I don't know how many survived the culling I saw coming, but I hope at least a few were able to help you. The Firebird was always my favourite symbol because I saw it in you, my son. Though I have died, I know from my ashes has risen the fulfilment of all my hopes and dreams. You are the firebird's son, Harry, and you will burn so bright, and your song will be so powerful, that you will make the shadows weep in despair._

_I love you._

"Firebird's son," Harry whispered. "God, Mum, why did I have to get my dad's looks? I'd much rather have had your brains."

He did not get the _Daily Prophet_—his relatives would never have allowed that—but fortunately he had Hedwig and Neville, and the news his best friend in the magical world was giving him was not good at all.

The Ministry of Magic had a warrant out to arrest Hermione Granger and Justine Finch-Fletchley for murder. Though the Ministry had yet to recover the body of Jarush Stennon, the supposedly innocent wizard who just happened to be near Kings Cross when he disappeared, they seemed absolutely sure he was killed in the proximity of Hermione and Justine, who both were traced using underage magic. Both girls were also charged with underage magic and violating the Secrecy Statutes, but that seemed almost laughable next to a murder charge.

Worst of all, though, was Neville's warning that Hermione was probably defending herself.

"_A certain relation to an acquaintance of ours admitted she overheard a conversation between you and two of our classmates, and told her Dame. The Covens are not happy."_

Neville didn't need to tell Harry that Hermione and Justine's lives were in danger—that seemed evident already. He could not imagine Hermione killing anyone unless in self-defence.

With a sigh, Harry read through his mother's note one more time before using one of Dudley's lighters to burn the parchment. The door opened when the last part was gone and Petunia jumped in. "Aha!" she snarled. "So you're the one smoking that…what is that?"

"A piece of parchment with a note I didn't want to share," Harry said explained. "And Dudley's the one smoking, Aunt Petunia. Drugs don't affect my kind. You knew that, didn't you?"

Petunia blinked. "My Dudley would never do anything like that," she said, before marching back out of his room.

Harry opened the window to let the smoke out, and in so doing saw Arabella Figg walking across the street with a paper bag of groceries in her arms. Harry rushed out of his room, down the stairs, out the door and across the street in a heartbeat.

"Here, let me help you with that," he said.

Arabella smiled slyly at him. "How thoughtful! Thank you, young man. How has your summer been so far?"

"Excruciating," Harry said. "I wish I got the paper."

"Too easy to sneak a tracer to you," she said with a shake of her head.

"Can you tell me at least a little about what's happening?"

"The Wizengamot is still in session to select a new Minister. The two most common names are Rufus Scrimgeour and Pius Thicknesse."

"At least it's not Umbridge," Harry muttered.

"Oh no, it's always a man," Arabella said. "If a woman got elected, why then the Elders might demand to have a man lead the Sabbat. But the true boss is the Undersecretary of Magic, and Dame Dolores already has that position. I will say this; things are not pleasant."

"What about Voldemort?"

Figg turned onto her sidewalk as Harry walked with her, groceries in hand. "No one knows about him, Harry, not officially. For Amelia to say he came back would be to say how, and we don't want the Covens to know you were able to bind his spirit to a new body. That power, Harry…" The older woman shuddered. "You have no idea how terrifying that type of power is—to be able to manipulate magic and soul energy so easily is frightening. If the covens found out, they would kill you."

They stepped inside, and almost immediately Harry was inundated by kneazles. "Hello, Rufus," Harry said, leaning down to lift one of the kneazles into his arms. "Yes, I remember you."

Arabella stared a moment before shaking her head. "I remember you meeting him for the first time. It was the day I tested you to see if you were an Aether or not. It seems like it has been so long. And what a remarkable young man you've become."

Harry put the kneazle down as Arabella began putting away groceries. "Were you a member of the Order of the Phoenix?"

"Were?" Arabella said with a grin. "I still am, lad. Me, Alastor, Amelia…she was only Head Auror at the time. She lost her whole coven in the purges, poor girl. Her whole family, save for one niece, who survived quite by accident."

"Is Sybil Trelawney a member?"

Arabella nodded, and then sighed. "She hasn't come by lately, I hope she's doing well."

Harry saw a spike in the other woman's magic, bound as it was by her being a squib. "You and her … oh, right. None of my business."

"No, it isn't, but I'm sure Sybil hasn't been shy about her orientation. Does she still walk around her tower naked?"

"Yeah,"

Arabella laughed and finished putting away the groceries.

"Ms Figg, have you or any of the others heard from my friends, Hermione or Justine?"

"They're in hiding, Harry," Arabella said sombrely. "They fell in with someone who had a means of magically hiding a home—I can't say where. The Ministry is looking for them, but they haven't found her yet. They can't afford to come out, either, not with that warrant pending."

"Can't Madam Bones do anything about that?"

"No, not until the dust has settled." Figg pulled a butterbeer from her icebox and handed it to Harry, who accepted it gratefully. "Harry, I know it's hard to just sit and wait, but things are very dangerous for everyone right now. The covens are watching each other jealously and the Wizengamot is squawking like a bunch of chickens over how Fudge and the Diggory boy were killed. They're even accusing Dumbledore of having a role in it, since he's the only one that close to the explosion who survived."

"How did he survive?"

"His phoenix," Arabella said. "A handy friend to have, don't you think?"

"Yeah," Harry said. He drank his butterbeer and watched as the older squib puttered around her kitchen. "Ms Figg?"

"Yes, dear?"

"What about my birthday? Will the covens…you know. Will they really make me get bonded?"

"That's the one thing that hasn't changed, Harry," she said sadly. "The Sabbat's charge is still binding, and no one has forgotten. On your fifteenth birthday, a witch will be sent to your home to bond you. By custom, if you refuse, then another will be sent, and then a third if you refuse the second. They get worse with each one—older and meaner. If you refuse the third, then you will be taken from your home and bonded by force. What would be a pleasant sensation becomes painful. I've heard it described as Coven-sanctioned rape, really."

Harry shuddered. "I don't want that to happen," he said.

"It won't, Harry," Arabella said. "Since you knew about the order, I gather you've read your mum's message?"

Harry nodded mutely.

"Do you know who she was talking about?"

"Luna."

"Luna Lovegood," Arabella confirmed with a nod. "Expect her before your birthday, Harry. She'll have to come alone because your wards would keep out adults that might accompany her. Not even I could actually go to your house. But because she is only fourteen and won't mean you harm, she can. But be warned—those wards will collapse the moment the bonding is complete."

"So I'm supposed to bond and…have sex…with a fourteen year old girl?" Harry asked. "It doesn't seem any fairer to her and it does to me."

"It isn't fair, lad," Arabella said. "But it must needs be done. I assure you the two of you are not the first in history to give your sex for a greater cause. Look for her."

"I will."

~~Firebird~~

~~Firebird~~

On the thirtieth day of July, on the eve of Harry's fifteenth birthday, a strange bus appeared on Privet Drive. It was a rather disconcerting shade of purple, with three decks. It arrived in a billow of wind and the squeal of brakes, and then disappeared with the roar of an engine and another billow of air, leaving in its inexplicable wake a single girl with long, straggly white-blond hair.

The girl wore a plain white dress with a circlet of intricately crafted silver holding her hair out of her eyes, and a pair of finely wrought silver radishes as earrings. The front of her circlet had a crown of two moons facing opposite directions and a third full moon in the centre, much like the progression of the lunar cycle.

Being a Sunday afternoon, the neighbourhood was bustling with the slow, summer activities of the proletariat. Husbands and wives dickered about outside, pretending to work on their gardens while talking amicably to their neighbours, usually about other neighbours. Children played football in the street using cheap plastic goals while their parents looked on with proud smiles.

The strange girl in the white dress and silver circlet looked vastly out of place, as if transplanted form a Tolkien novel of elves, wizards and hobbits. Nor did her behaviour aid in the impression of belonging. She stood for almost a minute, blinking in the sunlight and looking curiously about her, before taking a few hesitant steps down the street.

Dolly and Ned Spickleman frowned as the girl brazenly walked up to their front door and stared inquisitively at the number 12 set to the side of the door. "Oh, I understand!" she said, clapping her hands in delight over something that only she could guess at.

"What can we do for you, lass?" Dolly asked at last.

The girl turned and stared at her, the child's eyes widening to almost cartoon proportions. "Oh, hello. Am I not supposed to be here?"

"Generally folks don't go walking in another person's garden," Dolly said. Her own girl was four, and she was used to having to explain things simply.

"Oh, I see, terribly sorry," the girl said. "I've never seen a place like this. It is so interesting. How do you make your houses all look so alike? It's as if you just copied each house, one after the other, like magic."

Dolly glanced at her husband, and Ned stared right back, as confused as she was. "Are you looking for something, young lady?" he asked, a little more firmly.

"Oh, I am, thank you," she said, beaming broadly.

Dolly snorted and covered her face to hide the smile. Ned, with the smile he used whenever he spoke to Dursley, said, "And what might that be, girl?"

"I am looking for Harry Potter."

Dolly lost her smile. "Why would a nice girl like you look for a boy like that? I bet's not even back from that delinquent boys' school he attends."

The strange girl stared first at Dolly, then Ned, before blinking and shaking her head. "That is a very strange thing to say. Why would _The_ Harry Potter be going to a delinquent boys' school? His ancestors fought at Arthur's side against the Saxons, his family holds lands granted by the Romans and affirmed by kings since, and he has more money than he can count. He goes to a boarding school in Scotland so exclusive one can't even apply to it, one can only be invited. You don't appear to have a wrackspurt infestation, so you must have been told that by someone else, but what a strange thing to say."

"You don't know what you're talking about, child," Dolly said.

"Oh, but I do. Our mums were good friends, you see. We attend the same school. Do you know which way to his house, please?"

Wordlessly, Ned hitched a thumb over his shoulder.

"Oh, wonderful, thank you," she said lightly before skipping—yes, _skipping_—out of their garden and back to the street.

When she was gone, Ned looked to Dolly and said, "You believe that?"

Dolly pursed her lips. "I've seen the Dursley boy acting the part of a hooligan, but never the smaller boy. We just have what Vernon says, and we both know what he's like."

Ned grinned. "Might make an interesting story to tell, now, mightn't it?"

~~Firebird~~

~~Firebird~~

Petunia Dursley sighed in annoyance at the sound of knocking coming from their front door.

"Who'd that be, then?" Vernon asked, as annoyed as she to have his Sunday brunch interrupted.

Petunia threw her napkin down on the table, stood and walked to the door. Upon opening it, she saw a girl in a white dress, with nearly white-blonde hair held back by an admittedly breath-taking silver circlet. She was petite, but developed enough for Petunia to place the girl in her teens. She looked up at Petunia with wide eyes of an odd shade of silver-blue and said, "Oh, hello, you must be Petunia Dursley." Then, to Petunia's shock and dismay, the girl stepped right past her as if she had lived in the house her entire life. From the kitchen, Vernon called, "Who was it, Pet?"

He looked up as Luna walked into the room, stared at him for a moment frozen in shock, and then screamed. Vernon screamed because she screamed and threw his roast beef sandwich into the air while in the process of falling from his chair. Petunia rushed back in, while Harry Potter came thudding down the stairs.

He paused at the foot of the stairs when he saw who it was and smiled despite the scream. "Luna!"

"Harry!" she said in a frantic, terrified voice. "Look at him!" She pointed.

Confused, Harry walked further into the living room where he saw his uncle trying with mixed results to right himself while Petunia tried to help. "What's wrong, Luna?" he asked while looking at Vernon.

"That…that…man!" Luna said, sounding on the verge of tears, "How can he be so fat and still be alive?"

Harry started to laugh but stopped when he realized from her expression and the feel of her magic that she was dead serious. "Well, you know, Muggles don't burn calories the way we do, so if they eat too much, they become overweight."

"Oh," she said, taking a deep, shuddering breath. "How terrible for them. He is going to die very soon."

"Luna," Harry said, fighting not to laugh at his relative's angry faces as they struggled together to get Vernon upright, "are you here to…?"

"Yes, I've come to bond with you," Luna confirmed, matter-of-factly.

"What?" Petunia squawked, in the process losing her grip on Vernon and allowing the large man to fall back to the ground with a groan.

Harry shook his head and for the first time looked into the younger girl's eyes. Almost immediately he realized his mistake, but by then it was too late.

She was looking right back at him, her own eyes large, silver and blue. Her magic sparkled about her head and began reaching for his magic of its own accord, just as his responded in kind. If was just like his first year when he looked at Mary Carlisle, the healer. "Luna, I'm not ready," he said, though there was no protest in his voice.

"Oh, I'm not either," Luna said lightly. "In point of fact, I'm quite frightened. I'm only fourteen, you know. I've thought of you constantly, of course. When the nargles and heliotropes come, sometimes I could feel you watching me and it made things better, but I'm not sure I'm ready. But it has to be now. My mum said so in her book, you see, and I saw in Sybil's class that we would bond, and father said that I had to be your first, and…oh my, what an interesting feeling."

"Yeah," Harry breathed. "You don't look like I expected."

"What did you expect?"

"I don't know," Harry admitted. "Maybe the typical pretty blonde girl. But you don't look typical."

As if pulled, the two drifted closer. "I've never been told I'm pretty, so it should not surprise me you think me plain."

"Not plain," Harry said. "Different. Unique. But still pretty." Both teens were flushed brilliantly.

"Harry, I think I should kiss you now," Luna continued.

"Okay."

"Now see here!" Vernon shouted from the floor, but the two ignored him as they drew in together and kissed. It was chaste at first, but quickly deepened into something more. Vernon regained his feet at last and charged forward to physically separate them when the air about their heads cracked loudly, like a small bolt of lightning.

"I think we may be bonding now," Luna said, still in her light tone, oblivious to the Dursleys. "It feels quite extraordinary. Witch's health did not talk about this part. I feel…Harry, I think we need to go to your room now."

"Don't you dare take that slag up to your room, boy!" Vernon roared.

"I have to, Uncle Vernon," Harry said, though he could not look away from Luna. "If not her, it would have to be someone else tomorrow. The Sabbat ordered me to bond."

"My father will be coming soon," Luna said. "To see us marry before the Covens kill me. The bond must be consummated before then. Are you ready?"

"Are you?"

"No," Luna said with a nervous giggle. "As good as it feels, I'm still quite frightened. I'm only fourteen, after all."

"I'm scared too."

To the stunned shock of the Dursleys, Harry and Luna took each other's hands and walked slowly up the stairs, staring deeply into each other's eyes the entire time. The door to Harry's room slammed shut moments later.

When at last he could speak, Vernon snarled, "I want that Freak out of this house today! I won't have it, not anymore!"

* * *

sp

sp

**Author's Note**: Very special thanks as always to Teufel1987, JR and Miles for beta reading. If there are any major faux-pas, they are entirely of my own doing.


	3. Heavy Fates

A/N: Chap 2 review responses are in the Firebird forum like normal. Thanks for reading.

* * *

**Chapter Three: Heavy Fates**

In the smallest bedroom of Number 4 Privet Drive, two days before Harry blew up a train heading into London, fourteen-year-old Luna Lovegood laid on her side facing the wall. Her head rested on the right arm of Harry Potter, while his left hung over her bare waist. She wept very softly, while Harry lay next to her in silence.

"I'm not the first to give her sex to a cause," she finally said without looking at him. "But I didn't expect it to hurt so much. They said it was only a small pinching feeling, but I think you were larger than normal, or I was smaller than usual."

"Luna, I'm sorry," Harry said, almost on the verge of tears himself just because of her crying.

"It's not your fault," Luna said with a sniff. "I've been told since I was born that I was going to bond with you, Harry. Mum said so in her book. Have you finished reading your Mum's notes?"

"Yeah, did you read those too?"

"Oh no, I wouldn't," Luna said, wiping her eyes. "It seemed far too personal. But my mum also wrote a book. It was not as popular as your mum's because my mum looked atypical, like I do, while your mum was beautiful. Beautiful sells better, Father says. But she told me what your mum said—that we would have to bond before we could change the world. I knew it would happen, and I was alright with it, I suppose. None of the boys at school seemed interested in me despite being an Aether, and I hated the idea of poaching a younger boy. But it…well, I suppose the fact is different than the theory."

Harry leaned forward and gently kissed her neck. "Thank you for bonding with me, Luna."

"At least it did not last very long," Luna continued. "I did not realize wizards finished so quickly."

Harry blushed. "Er, yeah, sorry about that. I'll get better, I promise."

She turned to face him, pale and ethereal, and in her own way beautiful, and placed a hand on his cheek. "Do you feel any weaker? Magically, I mean?"

Harry shook his head. "No. I feel the same."

Luna nodded and sniffed again. Her eyes and nose were red and swollen with tears. She turned all the way around and Harry found himself looking down at her body and feeling his teenage hormones responding. Luna, though, was staring at some point past his ear while she continued to talk in low tones on the edge of being a whisper. "Mum said that there was not a case of two heterosexual actuating Aethers bonding since Helena Ravenclaw and Darius Black, and the Sabbat doesn't like to talk about that so it doesn't appear in history books. Male Aethers don't happen naturally. Your mum had to make you an Aether through a transference ritual. Other times, the child was a girl whose gender was forced into becoming male, but they usually end up being homosexual. That's why male Aethers are so rare." She paused, and suddenly started weeping again. She cried very quietly, so that if not for the tears themselves Harry would never have known she was crying at all.

He pulled her close, at a loss of what to do. "It's okay, Luna," he said.

"Did you know that Catherine of Castile was only fifteen when she married?" she said from her position, head buried in his chest. Harry was beginning to think she was a nervous talker. "Of course, her husband was only nine so I doubt the marriage was consummated immediately. Her daughter was married at thirteen, but was ill and they had to delay the consummation as well. I read about how young many royals were when they married since I knew I would be bonding early, but it's not the same thing, not really, reading about someone else and living it for yourself. I would have been quite happy waiting, or not bonding at all. But of course I knew I had to bond you because that was my fate. Everyone said so. You know about fates, don't you, Harry Potter?"

Harry gently moved a stray strand of blonde hair from out of her eyes. "Luna, we've bonded. I think you can call me Harry."

She nodded. "I hope we come to love each other. It is odd, I've seen this moment; this bedroom. Sybil drew a lovely picture of me on her wall, did you see it? But I've never been able to see if we ever actually love each other. It's quite odd, isn't it? Do you know where we shall live now? I've thought of that as well. I've seen us together, but I never saw where. Do you think Hermione Granger will be my friend?"

Harry sputtered. "Hermione?"

"You know you're going to bond her too, don't you?"

Numbly, he nodded, because he did know that. In fact, before he finished deciphering his mum's message he thought of trying to call her to bond with her first, but of course she was in hiding and he had no idea how to even find her.

"She is quite a lovely girl," Luna continued, absently wiping her tears. "She has very nice breasts, I think. Her hips are nice as well—in witch's health Professor Hooch said wizards liked hips. We practiced how to sway our hips when we walked, but it does not work well if you have thin hips."

Thinking of Ginny Weasley, Harry couldn't help but agree.

"Ginny is going to want to kill me, I think," Luna said, as if reading his mind. "We used to be very good friends. She was also told that she would bond you, but of course Dame Molly could not see the future like your Mum could. Our mums knew we would bond because that was our fate. But then my family was proscribed and they killed my mum, and Ginny and I couldn't be friends anymore."

She finally stopped talking and snuggled closer to him. After a moment, she said, "Harry?"

"Yeah?"

"One time, when you were watching me, did you…did you use the _Mas Turbare_?"

Blushing furiously, Harry nonetheless nodded. "The first time I ever used it. I have a magical map, and I saw some of my teammates having sex, and then there you were. I'm sorry, I know it's creepy."

"But I knew you were watching." She moved her head until she was looking deep into his eyes. "I felt something that made me want to use it too. So I did—I sat down in the hall and I used the charm for the very first time. I've always liked to think in a way that was our first time together."

"I'd like that too," Harry admitted.

Sniffing, Luna said, "Harry?"

"Yeah?"

"Professor Hooch in witch's health said that most times the second time was better. Do you…do you want to try again?"

Mutely, Harry nodded.

"Okay," Luna said. "Harry?"

"Yeah?"

"Do you think I am pretty?"

"Yes, I really do," Harry said.

She shared a watery smile. "Thank you."

~~Firebird~~

~~Firebird~~

The only bright side Petunia could think of to what was happening in her home was that Dudley was spending the day with his friend Piers Polkiss, and so did not have to be exposed to the crimes against humanity that were happening right over her head.

"I can't believe this," Vernon said, beginning the second hour of his rant. "That we just let those two freaks walk in and start rutting away like animals! What kind of house is this? How could we just let this happen? Why, I have half a mind to walk up there right now and throw them both out of here."

"I doubt we'll have to," Petunia finally said with an exasperated sigh. She didn't say anything during the first hour of his long rant just because it was usually easier to let him get it out, but while the two witch-born were in the house, he would not be appeased.

"And what is that supposed to mean?" he snarled, turning on her.

"My sister explained it to me, years ago," Petunia said. "The witches bond the wizards to keep them under control. The bond is like a leash. Women run everything in their world. So they sent that…that…girl to bond him because he was being as much a problem to them as he was to us. We tell him he has to marry her, and then he is gone, Vernon. He's out of our life forever."

While in mid-rant, it took a little while for Vernon to process new information. So he simply stared at her, his large round face still red from his anger, until a very slow, steady smile began to spread. "Rid of him?"

"Yes," Petunia said. "Lily was sixteen or seventeen when she bonded that Potter boy. His family came right over demanding they get married, but Mum and Dad said no. Lily told me later they lived together in the school anyway. The boy has bonded now, Vernon. He's not our problem anymore."

Suddenly the front door slammed open and a tall, unearthly-looking man in white robes over white trousers and shoulder-length white hair came barging into the house with a length of wood in his hands. "Harry Potter!" he shouted. "I demand that you do right by my daughter!"

Petunia and Vernon gaped at the man, too surprised to talk.

Upstairs, a door swung open with a bang and the girl from before rushed down the steps in the same white dress, though her circlet was gone. She rushed into the man's arms crying wildly. A moment later, Harry followed.

"Hello, Mr Lovegood," Harry said in a subdued tone.

"You have bonded!" Mr Lovegood said loudly. "I demand that you do the right thing and marry my daughter!"

"Er, we know, Mr Lovegood," Harry said.

The old wizard deflated. "I was told to make a show of it to scare your relatives, Mr Potter," he said in a much more reasonable tone.

"I think they're scared already," Luna said. "Look at them."

Lovegood looked at them, reared back as if struck and declared, "Egads, man! How can you be so fat and still live?"

"Muggles don't burn calories as fast, Father," Luna said. "So they get fat and die young."

"Poor sods," Lovegood said. Completely dismissing the Dursleys, he turned back to Harry and said, "So, introductions. I'm Xenophilius Lovegood, and I just wish to say what an honour it was to have you defile my only daughter."

He said it with an open, sincere smile. Harry blinked and smiled weakly. "Er, you're welcome? I'm sorry?"

Luna sniffed. "Be nice, Daddy, or the wrackspurts will come back."

Xenophilius shuddered. "Gah! I wouldn't want that to happen. On a more serious note, was he kind?"

"He was father," Luna said. "Just like we knew he would be."

"Do you have your things?" Lovegood said to Harry. "We must be gone soon now that the wards here have failed. I understand that the Covens have selected classmate of yours to be your wife. She is only a few months older, but very firmly a dark witch. I'm told she rather looks like Winston Churchill."

"She makes me look positively beautiful," Luna said.

"Don't say things like that about yourself, Luna," Harry said. "You're very pretty."

Nearby, Vernon Dursley erupted. "Will you all just get out of my house?"

Harry nodded and walked up to his Aunt and Uncle. "I'm leaving, and I won't come back. The wards failed today. Tomorrow, a witch will come by with orders to bond me. Feel free to tell her I've already found a bondmate on my own and have left."

"And then you might wish to move away," Xenophilius added. "Once the witch reports the wards have fallen—well, you, madam, are the last living family of Lily Potter. Mrs Potter unfortunately made some powerful enemies, and I'm sure they would take pleasure in killing you both. Without the wards to protect you, you would not be able to stop it."

"Worse part of that is I just can't make myself care about it," Harry said, staring right at his Aunt. "So, I think the best thing do to is for me to just leave now, and leave you two to your fates. Good bye."

They took the Knight Bus. The three of them walked calmly out of the house, leaving behind a still stunned pair of Dursleys, to see the neighbours had gathered about, curious as to the goings-on at Number 4 Privet Drive. One group of them happened to be Dudley and his gang.

"What's this about, Potter?" Harry's cousin shouted.

"I'm leaving, Dudley," Harry said. "Try not to let the police know about that drug stash under your bed."

Of course, he said it loudly enough that everyone in the neighbourhood could hear. Harry didn't care—the bus had arrived. No one thought to question where it came from, or even why it was there in the first place since public transport did not run through Privet Drive—the charms on the bus wouldn't let them even if they wanted to. They only knew that Harry Potter, an odd blond girl in what looked like a plain wedding dress, and a tall, gaunt man in white all boarded a bus and left.

On board the bus, which flew through the country side as fast as the car Neville and Harry rode in during his first summer with the Longbottom wizard, he asked, "Where are we going?"

"To Dame Brannwen," Xenophilius said. "Since you formally moved to the Lloyd Coven, she has to bless you and then perform the marriage. Ministry marriages can only be done for witches and wizards outside a Coven."

"Mostly Muggleborns and half-bloods," Luna said absently. She sat next to Harry, leaning into him while he held an arm around her narrow shoulders. "I do feel better, Harry, please don't fret so. I do wonder if this is what all bonds feel like? I feel like I have Nargles in my brain."

"Well, yes," Xenophilius said with a sad smile. "Why do you think wizards keep doing it even if it weakens some of us almost to the point of squibs? Sex is a powerful weapon, Mr Potter, and I think you've finally come to realize that."

"It was pretty nice," Harry admitted.

Beside him, Luna said, "The second time, maybe. The first time hurt quite a lot."

"I'm sorry."

"You've said. It's fine, don't worry. There is a topical potion made just for that, it works quite well." She sighed. "I like being held by you. I dreamed of holding you all those times you watched me. How did you do that, by the way? You said you had a magical map?"

Harry smiled reached into the pullover he wore and removed a thick wad of parchment. He unfolded it and activated it. Currently only Dumbledore, Snape, Hooch and Sinistra were in the castle. "My father and his friends made it. Professor Lupin was one of them. They gave it to me to make sure I never ran into you, actually, that's why I started watching where you were in the castle. They told me I had to stay away from you or terrible things would happen."

"From their perspective, terrible things have happened," Xenophilius said, his smile fading. "Mr Potter—Harry—I hope you know that this summer is going to be spent running a great deal. You are both in danger, my daughter especially."

"I know," Harry said. To Luna, he said, "I did read a little bit more of my Mum's message. She told me to do something. She said…"

"Stop!" Xenophilius said. "What you discuss with your bond mate is for the two of you alone. I cannot be a part of it. I am not an Occlumens, Mr Potter, and given my proscribed status, I have little right to stop a Legilimens' attack. What I do now I do within my rights as a father, since my beautiful Selene is gone. Beyond that, it is a risk for all of us."

"I understand, sir," Harry said. "Do you think Dame Brannwen will help us?"

"She will," Luna said. "You saw it in the leaves, the Daily Prophet said."

"Yeah, I did."

He continued to hold the girl at his side in silence, confused by the strange lightness he felt. It was, he knew, a temporary side-effect of the bond. Ten days, Snape had said back in Third Year. Then the euphoria wore off. And yet even knowing that didn't change the fact that he felt happy. Holding her made him happy, even though in reality he did not know her at all.

The bus came to an abrupt halt that sent the three of them stumbling toward the door. Upon climbing out, they found themselves on a narrow country lane surrounded by massive oaks, with an earthen path leading between the ancient trees. Hand in hand with Luna, Harry started walking down the path, while Xenophilius followed a step behind. They did not travel far before they came across a resident of the area using cutting spells to quarter firewood.

The wizard looked to be well beyond his middle years, but not ancient as witch-born often came to be. He was perhaps seventy to eighty years old but looked to be only in his forties. He straightened from his work and eyed them warily. "You're Potter, then?" the man said without surprise.

"Yes," Harry said.

"Nana is waiting for you," the other wizard said in a brusque manner. "She's been ill these past few days. Grand Papa has died in his sleep. We think she'll follow soon."

"Carlton Lloyd passed away?" Harry asked, seeking to confirm who Grand Papa was.

The wizard nodded. "They stood up in both the Sabbat and Wizengamot for you, but it was too much for them. You'd better go; she's been waiting for you."

They continued up the path until they reached the wood fence lining the garden of an ancient, low-built cottage of stone and thatch. Despite it being summer, a thin trail of smoke rose from the stone chimney. Still with Luna's hand in his, Harry walked to the door and knocked.

The door swung open to reveal an ancient woman with a bowed back and the gleam of magic in her eyes. "Ahh, there you are," she said in a hollow voice. "Nana was waiting for you, but we wondered if you would come in time. Come, come inside. Bring your bonded, child." Harry and Luna stepped over the threshold, and in so doing passed through powerful wards that made their skin tingle.

"I am Brannwenna, the surviving granddaughter and next Dame of the coven," the ancient witch said. "You are Harry Potter. And you, child, are Luna. I see you have bonded already, just as Nana told us you would."

"Yes," Luna said.

"But it is not a normal bond," Branwenna continued. "The magic has not flowed as it should, and the boy remains as powerful as before."

"As it was meant to be," Luna said.

The ancient witch nodded. "So Nana said. Come, children. Wizard, stay here."

"I will," Xenophilius said without hesitation.

Though on the outside the home looked like an ancient English cottage, the interior was significantly expanded, with high ceilings, plaster on the walls and centuries of wizarding portraits following them.

"You have some Lloyd in you, boy," the witch said. "Not by my line, it feels like, but by my aunt's line."

"Dame Brannwen said she felt Amberlin in me," Harry volunteered.

The ancient witch nodded with a fond smile. "Amberlin, yes. My favourite aunt. She was a good witch, and brought honour to the Potter clan." She led him through a breath-taking courtyard with a small circle of standing stones, each one at least as large as Harry, with a stone bench in the middle. In the middle of the circle he saw a cot, and on this cot rested the very still form of Brannwen Lloyd.

"They are here, Nana," the witch said loudly.

"I'm not deaf, child," the withered witch whispered weakly. "Harry, Luna, come to me please."

The young couple knelt down beside the ancient witch. Brannwen did not turn her head to look at them, nor would she have needed to. Her eyes were virtually alight with the glow of her magic. In fact, her whole, withered body had taken on a faint luminescence, as if her magic were about to burst free.

"We're here, Dame Brannwen," Harry said softly.

"Give me your hands together," the Dame said in her dry whisper.

Wordlessly, Harry and Luna held hands, and placed their joined hands in Brannwen's. "Granddaughter?" she said.

"I'm here as well, Nana."

"Then bear witness, child. I bless the bonding of Harry James Potter and Luna Selene Lovegood, and by my power as Harry's dame declare them this day husband and wife. I accept Luna Selene Potter into the Lloyd coven, with my love and blessings, and give sanctuary to all who would call them friend. With my last breath and magic, this I declare."

"So mote it be, Nana," Brannwenna said, bowing her head.

And suddenly the ancient witch who had helped save Harry stopped breathing.

Harry stood, stunned, as her withered, dry hand fell from his. He watched, with Luna at his side, as the burning luminescence that was her magic rose up and out of her skin. The concentration of magic in her ghostly eyes stared at them, and from them Harry felt a sense of warmth and well-wishes. Instead of turning blue and cold like other ghosts, though, Brannwen's magic stayed red and continued to rise up into the air, until it passed through the ceiling.

"She used up everything she had waiting for you," Branwenna said calmly. "I am Dame now. I will post the banns for you and make the announcement. But you should both be aware that regarding this marriage the covens are not united. I was at the Sabbat that ordered you bonded, boy. Delia Griffin was not just calling for you to be bonded, she was calling for your life. She knows you are a threat, and will not stop until she feels safe. Bonding with your wife as you have was not what she wanted, nor any of the other Dark Coven Dames who felt threatened by you. You must stay safe."

"Yes, Dame Brannwenna," Harry said.

"When Harry is ready to bond with the rest, shall we return?" Luna asked.

"Rest?" Harry asked, startled.

"Well, yes, you can't form a new coven with just me," Luna said.

"When you are ready to declare a coven," the new Dame said, "you must do so before a quorum of the Sabbat. Until then, while the Lloyd Coven declares sanctuary for you, that would not keep the assassins at bay. You cannot risk remaining here."

"We know," Luna said.

"Do you have a safe place?"

"We'll have to make our own, somehow," Harry said. He took Luna's hand, and together the two walked out to meet their fate.

~~Firebird~~

~~Firebird~~

With his parents arguing about moving or not, it fell to Dudley Dursley to open the door when the loud knock came on July 31st. He found himself facing the largest, ugliest girl he had ever seen in his life.

She stood easily as tall as him, with thick, curly black hair and a shadow of whiskers on her upper lip. Small, beady black eyes glared at him. He did notice the way her very large breasts strained against the plain white dress she wore, since she was most definitely not wearing a bra. He barely noticed the silver circlet with the three-phased moon on her head.

"Whaddya want?" he asked.

"I'm here for Harry Potter," she said in a voice two pitches deeper than Dudley's.

"He's gone. Left with some little blonde bird yesterday. Now go away."

She didn't go away. Dudley was in a boxing club at school and counted himself a pretty good fighter. He'd taken his share of hits. When the girl hauled off and punched him in the stomach, though, it felt as if he'd been hit by a battering ram. He stumbled back, struggling to breathe, as the girl forced her way into the house.

"Harry Potter!" she shouted.

Dudley's mum came running out of the kitchen, a terrified expression on her face. "Go away, please!" she cried. "Harry has already bonded. He bonded to someone named Lovegood. He's gone, I swear it."

"Lovegood?" the huge, frightening girl said. "He bonded with Luna _fucking_ Lovegood?"

"Yes, he's gone, I tell you!" Petunia said.

She then learned the difference between fat, like Vernon, and muscular, like Gregoria Goyle. The Slytherin witch back-handed Petunia so hard the older woman was lifted clean off her feet and slammed into Vernon's recliner with a ringing in her ear and a strange numbness in her left arm.

Vernon rushed in, screaming, "Petunia! You cow, I'll kill you!"

The witch flicked her wand, and Vernon's chest exploded out through his spine, covering the wall behind him in red.

"Dad!" Dudley screamed, before the witch turned and killed him as well. Finally, the witch looked back at Petunia. There were tears running down her cheeks.

"You're dead because of him," the witch told Petunia. "I was a lot better than what would have come after. I tried to tell him, to help him. I might have even let him have his little mudblood, if it made him happy. But he's blown it now. We're going to hunt him down and kill him. And everyone associated with him."

"_Please_," Petunia begged, though she felt so dizzy from the neck-snapping blow the word was slurred.

"Be glad I'm killing you quickly," Gregoria said as she wiped her eyes again. "It's the last favour Potter's going to get from me. _Inflammare!"_

Fire burst from her wand and immediately the sofa began to burn. With a loud sniff of her nose, which she wiped on the back of her hand, the witch spun and disappeared from the living room, leaving Petunia to fade before the fire as she looked at her slaughtered family.

The next day, a train crashed while heading into London.

* * *

sp

sp

**Author's Note**: Very special thanks as always to Teufel1987, JR and Miles for beta reading. If there are any major faux-pas, they are entirely of my own doing.


	4. Lab Rat

A/N: Chap 3 review responses are in my forums as always.

* * *

**Chapter Four: Lab Rat**

"You know this is so profoundly illegal we could all go to prison for a very long time," Edwin Granger said the morning after the train crash.

"Yes, I know," Sir Marcus said in a flat tone.

"That could be one of our girls in there," Edwin continued. "That could be Hermione, or Justine. Or Denise Creevey or any of the others."

"We have to know our enemy, Edwin," Sir Marcus snapped. Taking a deep breath to calm himself, he continued. "One wizard, who according to Hermione's research was bonded almost to the point of being a squib, almost put down my best tactical team bare-handed—one dead, one permanently disabled. A fifteen-year-old boy blew up a bloody train! The forensics team said the explosion was the equivalent to ten pounds of _PE4_! In fact, that's exactly what the Home Secretary is telling the PM. How can we fight people who can move about by magic, make themselves invisible, and are apparently twice as strong as we are?"

"By enlisting the help of other people with the same abilities," Edwin said with a shrug. "Such as our daughters … And possibly Mr Potter. And possibly the young girl in that room."

Through the observation mirror, fourteen-year-old Luna Lovegood squatted down in a corner of a padded white room clad in a pair of elastic-waist pyjama bottoms and a plain white shirt. Her pale blonde hair looked tangled and her face drawn and pale.

The door opened behind the two men and Samuel Watterson, Sir Marcus's top agent in his unit, stepped into the observation chamber. "The witch we hired is gone, sirs," the man said. "Says the boy's curse has been healed, but that the wound itself will have to heal on its own. She dosed him with one of those witch-draughts and said he should be out for a day or two. I paid her in cash as you agreed."

"Are our girls in the other wing?" Edwin asked.

"Yes, sir. Your wives are with them; they have no idea what's happening."

"Good," Sir Marcus said. "Sam, please stay just outside. Don't come in unless you believe I'm in immediate danger."

"Yes, sir."

Sir Marcus left the observation room, stepped into the hall of the country manor they were using as Unit Headquarters and safe house, and walked down to the secure, computer-coded cell door. He entered his passcode, pressed his thumb to the scanner, and then stepped into the room.

The air felt electric—filled with ozone slightly tinged by sweat and fear. Sir Marcus immediately became aware of how the hair on his arms and the back of his neck stood up at the ozone he smelled, and the sheer magic the girl in the corner was putting off. She was without her veil, and as such her eyes had a strange, shimmery silver cast to them that, mixed with her astonishingly pale complexion, made her look fey and inhuman.

She looked at him for just a moment before shrinking into a ball, arms holding her knees to her chin and her eyes averted. "Please," she said in a breathy whisper. "Please let me see Harry."

"Perhaps," Sir Marcus said in an encouraging tone, as if he were speaking to a child. "But we need to talk a little before I can promise you anything."

"You don't understand," the girl whispered. "We're newly bonded. I need to be with him—it hurts. Please…"

"If you cooperate, then you can see him," Sir Marcus said, keeping his tone level.

"I want Harry now!" the girl screamed suddenly. The air crackled and Sir Marcus stumbled back as if struck, while around him the walls exploded in violent, brilliant waves of psychedelic colour. When he felt an odd touch of air, he looked down in horror and saw he was wearing a bridal dress of off white, studded in pearls. The sound of sizzling behind him made him think their observation camera was gone as well.

"Please," she whispered again, shrinking back down into herself. "Please let me see my husband."

Fighting off a touch of panic the likes he'd not felt in years before he watched one wizard incapacitate half a tactical unit, Sir Marcus turned and left the room. The moment he was in the hall again, the dress seemed to melt back into his trousers, shirt and vest. By the time he made it back to the observation room, there was no sign of his changed clothes.

The walls in the holding room, though, looked as if Andy Warhol's head had been blown up by a rainbow-coloured artillery shell.

"I'm going to talk to Hermione about bonding," Edwin declared. The other man appeared to be as shaken as Sir Marcus felt. "If she's actually in pain, then I can't support this. She isn't the enemy, Marcus. Neither is Potter, I think."

"Fine," Sir Marcus growled. When Edwin was gone, Marcus turned to Watterson. "The healer witch was dealt with?"

Watterson nodded. "No trace. It took four bullets."

Outside the room, it took Edwin only a few moments to cross the manor to the other wing and go down two sets of stairs to the spacious first-floor balcony where his daughter and her friend were sunbathing while reading. Calliope sat nearby under an umbrella, drinking a glass of wine and reading a medical journal.

Hermione hopped up first, and it took an effort of will for Edwin not to trip. He loved his family more than anything else, but when his bikini-clad daughter jumped up just then, she did not look like his beautiful little girl. She looked like his wife did on their first day at the beach together so many years ago. Hermione was growing up far faster than he felt comfortable with.

"What are you doing on this wing of the manor, love?" Calliope asked. "I thought you and Justine's father were still busy playing soldier."

Edwin smiled wanly at his wife—she became rather sharp after a few glasses of wine, and the last month and a half of forced exile had been difficult for all of them. The manor was not just the headquarters of Sir Marcus's unit, it was the safe house they hid in while Hermione's and Justine's lives remained in danger.

"Had a question for the girls," he said, coming around before taking a shirt lounger to face the girls. Clearing his throat, he said, "Shirts on for this, okay girls?"

Hermione rolled her eyes, but Justine blushed and pulled on the large, loose shirt both girls wore out onto the balcony. "Thank you," Edwin continued. "So, I did have a question for you about these bonds of yours. I know about the magic-sapping from what you've already said, but what about those first few days after a bond? What are they like?"

"Well, it's supposed to make you feel quite happy," Hermione said. "Professor Hooch said it was just the feeling caused by a man's magic flowing into a woman's, but I'm not sure. Rather, I think it is a magical, evolutionary trait to encourage conception of young during the initial bonding. Similar to the feelings of pleasure at the sex act itself."

Hearing his daughter calmly discuss sex acts was difficult for Edwin, but he merely nodded. "So, say a couple is bonded. What happens if they are separated within that first few days?"

Hermione and Justine's mutual expressions of horror made Edwin feel very, very uncomfortable indeed. "Dad, you don't do that, not even the Sabbat would separate a newly bonded pair. I mean, dark covens might kill them, or kill one of them to break the bond, but to separate newly bonded is proscribed. It makes the couple's magic try to reach each other, and the strain can actually kill them. I read one account of a bonded couple captured by the Inquisition in Spain in 1782. The inquisitor was actually a squib with a deep-seated hatred for all things magical. He discovered the couple was newly bonded and so purposely separated them, placing each in a cell across a hall from the other. He then recorded what happened for the Church—the couple eventually died of accidental magic after screaming for seven straight days. They were my age. It's a famous account, and one of the reasons why Sabbats around the world are so very hostile to Catholicism, even those in Catholic countries. Think about it—there are some magicals alive today who personally remember when that happened."

Edwin swallowed bile. "I see. Thank you."

"Daddy, what are you hiding?" Hermione said, suddenly suspicious.

"Nothing, dear, go back to your bathing." Edwin turned and walked back out of the balcony, moving faster away than he did coming to them. As soon as he cleared the doors, he broke into a sprint, fighting down bile all the while. He reached the observation room at full tilt and found Sir Marcus and Watterson still inside, staring at the crying girl in the room.

"We have to end this," Edwin blurted when he came in. "Hermione said separating bonded couples is a torture so bad not even their Sabbat does it. Think about it—the Sabbat thought nothing of trying to murder our daughters, but considers something like this to be inhumane. We have to…"

The door security pad at the door blinked, sparked, and then went black. The door opened and Hermione stepped in with her wand out, still wearing her large white shirt over her bikini that hung down mid-thigh, and loafers. She wore her hair pulled into a rough pony-tail and held in place by a scrunchy. Justine stepped in behind her in similar garb, but of course she wore her hair at only neck-length.

"Hermione, Justine, you need to leave!" Sir Marcus snapped angrily.

"Oh Morgana, that's Luna!" Hermione whispered, eyes wide with horror. "Daddy, that's Luna Lovegood! She's a classmate of mine. What are you doing to her?"

Justine, though, shook her head angrily and left the observation room. All the inhabitants turned to the window as the security panel failed before the young witch's magic, and Justine stepped into the white padded room. Through the low-tech speaker grills, they heard: "Luna? It's Justine Finch-Fletchley from school. Are you alright?"

Luna looked up and suddenly started bawling. She shot into the taller girl's arms, clinging to her desperately. "I need Harry!" she cried out. "Please, please let me see Harry!"

Even as she held the much smaller girl, Justine looked sharply at the wall where the observation window was. Inside, Hermione paled and stared at her father and Sir Marcus. "Harry?" she whispered. "My Harry? Is Harry Potter here, in this manor?"

"Hermione…" Edwin began.

"Is Harry Potter here?" Hermione screamed. Just like the containment room, a burst of accidental magic made all three men step back as the walls flashed red. A glass of water began to boil and suddenly caught fire—the glass itself burned until molten silica pooled on the plastic shelf, melting it as well.

"Hermione, stop this," Edwin said sharply.

Hermione's wand began to rise; Samuel Watterson reached for his side-arm, but Hermione dropped her wand and took a deep breath. "Is Harry here?" she finally asked.

"Yes," Sir Marcus finally admitted. "We caught them yesterday afternoon following a massive train derailment that Harry caused during a fight with a pair of unidentified witches. He was badly injured; we've treated his curse and kept him and his companion separated. He killed three people, young lady. Three innocent people."

"Hermione, we didn't know…" Edwin said.

Hermione huffed her breath angrily, left the men and walked into the room where Justine continued to hold the sobbing Luna. The younger girl looked up at Hermione and sniffed. "You couldn't be first, you see," she said. Despite her tears and the mess of a hard cry, her voice sounded oddly calm and mature. "The Covens would never tolerate a Muggleborn Dame. I'm sorry."

"When?" Hermione said. Though she sounded calm, her lower lip trembled.

"July 30th," Luna said. "The day before the Sabbat witch came. We fled to Dame Brannwen to be married, and they've been chasing us since. I think…they killed Harry's relatives. Daddy warned them to leave when the wards failed, but I think they rather hated Harry and did not listen to us and now… please help me, Hermione. It hurts without him. Please."

"Come on," Hermione said before turning to leave the cell.

Justine guided the younger witch into the hall with an arm around her thin shoulders. Watterson stood in the hall already there with two other agents who eyed the three witches with cool expressions—their fathers were noticeably absent. Hermione ignored the agents as she held up her wand and said, "Point Me! Harry Potter."

The wand spun on her palm until it led them further up the hall, to a room at the north east corner of the wing. The secured lock failed before another simple _Alohomora_ to reveal the sterile white recovery room of Harry Potter.

Luna rushed out of Justine's hands like a bullet and did not stop until she was under the covers curled up next to the oblivious Harry. Hermione and Justine both stepped in and saw bruises covering his chest, and thick bandages seeping blood over his right shoulder. His left arm looked oddly blue, as if it had recently had a healed break.

"What happened?" Hermione asked quietly.

"Hit Witches found us on a train into London," Luna said. "We were trying to find a way to get to Harry's vaults. We had no money and we were hungry. Harry…he had a strange vision. He saw them come in and kill us just seconds before they actually did so. I think it allowed him to save our lives. He used a new spell—one he'd only read about, but it worked. It made one of the Hit Witches explode, but it also broke the Muggle train badly. He was hit with a dark curse I couldn't heal, but I can see its better now."

She sighed and laid her head down on his chest. "In all my visions of him, and all his visions of me, we never saw him being hurt so quickly after our bonding. Of course, I never saw sex hurting the first time either. Odd what Divination does and does not show, does it? When I saw you bonding him, you did not look like it hurt at all, but it made me cry. Strange."

Hermione's cheeks were flaring. "Harry and I are not bonded."

"But you will be," Luna whispered before she suddenly slipped into a deep, exhausted slumber.

Visibly shaking, Hermione turned and saw her father in the doorway with Sir Marcus. "I have never, ever wanted to use magic against you, Daddy," Hermione whispered. "Until now. How could you not tell me he was here? Or that he had bonded with…" Unable to handle it any more, Hermione rushed from the room. No one attempted to stop her.

Into the silence that followed, Justine said, "Harry is our friend. He's my friend, Daddy. What the Sabbat ordered was bad enough, but for us to do this to him…"

"Us?" Sir Marcus said flatly.

"Us," Justine affirmed. "We are a part of this too, no matter what you think. If the Sabbat finds out what you're doing here, do you think they wouldn't kill me too? Or Hermione? Or Mum? We are all a part of this, and if you ever hope to win any type of peace, you will never, ever do anything like this again. Now please leave."

"Justine…"

"I'm going to stand outside the door," she said, "and I swear to Morgana I will curse anyone who tries to come in. The wards on this house override the trace, so no one will know."

"Come on, Marcus," Edwin finally said. "She's right, this was wrong. Let's give them some peace, at least."

~~Firebird~~

~~Firebird~~

Calliope Granger put the book down with a sigh. It wasn't very good to begin with, and a second reading did little to improve it. While her husband and Sir Marcus obtained a rather remarkable home to keep them safe, including comfortable if somewhat functional furnishings, it did not have a library but what she, Hermione, and Allison Finch-Fletchley thought to bring with them.

It didn't help that her husband, who she truly did love, had royally screwed the pooch.

The west wing of the manor served as their joint living quarters, with the top two of the three floors providing housing for both the her family and the Fletchleys above. The kitchen was on the ground floor, along with a nice exercise room converted from a solarium, and a formal reception room. Each floor had several bedrooms and a spacious study, and it was in this library on the first floor that she sat watching her husband typing on the computer. He sat hunched over, a physical expression of guilt she had rarely seen him employ.

"Are you going to talk to her?" she finally asked.

"She said she wanted to use magic on me, Cally," Edwin said without looking at her. "I think she doesn't really want to talk to me."

"And sulking at your computer is going to set things right?" Calliope asked pointedly. "Besides, Ed, I think you're missing something. Has Hermione ever written about any boy beside Harry Potter? Ever?"

"So?"

"She just found out her first crush married someone else, Ed. She's heartbroken."

He turned to face his wife and pulled at his ear absently, a trait she had not seen in her husband since they first dated while he was in the service. "Hadn't thought that, really," he admitted. "Cally—she burned through an access control panel in a second and made an actual glass cup melt just because she was upset. I thought Watterson was going to shoot—worse yet, I'm not sure he could've have taken her. I was _afraid_ of our daughter. Sometimes I wonder if the religious fanatics have the right idea, that maybe he should…"

Her hand silenced him with a loud, hard slap. Calliope stood before him, looking as startled as he was. "Don't you say it!" she hissed, her eyes moist. "Don't you dare! Hermione is our daughter, our only child. Don't you even think it!"

"Mum? Daddy?"

Both of them spun around to see their teenage daughter staring at them, and neither could help the shudder that ran down their spines. Hermione had let her veil drop, and in the dimly lit room with twilight falling outside, her eyes looked as if there were a banked fire behind them, casting a light wholly her own.

"Did we bother you, love?" Calliope forced out.

Hermione stepped a little closer, and Calliope couldn't help but notice she held her wand in her right hand. "I want to know what you were going to do to Luna," Hermione said.

"Hermione, love, we weren't…" Calliope began.

Hermione's eyes flashed. They _actually_ flashed with her magic, and Calliope fell silent. "What were you going to do to her, Daddy?" Hermione asked again.

"We were going to study her," Edwin finally admitted. "Not hurt her, Hermione. Never that. But we need to understand what we're facing. Sir Marcus has made inquiries and what he's found out is terrifying. And after school, watching that wizard…Hermione, we're out of our depth here. We need to protect you and the rest of Britain, but how do we do that when we don't know anything about who we're fighting?"

"You're not fighting my friend, Daddy," Hermione said coldly. "Luna Lovegood never hurt anyone in school. She was odd, yes, but that's because she was an Aether, just like…Harry. You were treating her like a lab rat."

"Hermione…"

"If she died, were you doing to do the same thing to me? Or Justine?"

"Of course not!" Edwin snapped angrily.

"You're afraid of me," Hermione said. "You always have been, I think. I've been wondering for so long why the Sabbats would never let me be Harry's first wife; why they kill Muggleborns who could even potentially be a Dame. Before, I thought it was simply discrimination and fear. But after I saw Luna and realized what you were doing, I began to understand. The Sabbats won't allow Muggleborns into power because of you, our parents. You're a threat not just to us, but to all magical kind. How many parents have sacrificed their children for a greater goal? Is this the land of Moriah, and my father Abraham? If it meant destroying magic to save yourselves, would you even think twice about sacrificing me?"

Calliope's knees trembled and then gave out. Edwin caught her enough to cushion her fall, but only just. "How could you say that?" Calliope choked on the words. "Hermione, how could you say that to us?"

Hermione wept too, and her lower lip trembled violently. "I never thought I could, until I found my parents torturing a witch just like me, only younger."

"We didn't know!" Edwin's voice cracked. "We didn't know we were hurting her, Hermione. I swear we didn't. She said she was hurting and I came to you girls to ask, don't you remember? We were not going to let her continue to hurt. We would never hurt you either, Hermione."

"And that's why I could never be a Dame," Hermione sobbed. "You're a threat to me—to my kind, but I just can't let you go. I just can't. I can't let you go."

As if a dam burst, Hermione rushed into her father's stunned arms. Edwin stiffened at the overwhelming shock, which passed quickly into a flood of warmth almost as shocking that sent him and his daughter to the floor beside his wife. When the rush of emotion slowed to a trickle, Hermione said in a thick voice, "My friends aren't the enemy, Daddy. All witch-born aren't the enemy. Please don't let Justine's dad make this an inquisition. Please."

"I won't, love," Edwin whispered as he held his daughter close.

~~Firebird~~

~~Firebird~~

Harry sighed in relief as he and Luna fell into perfect stillness together. She remained on her side, spooned up against him, their skin glistening with sweat. "It doesn't hurt anymore," she whispered. "In fact, it felt quite nice. I was so scared before, but it's better now."

"Yeah," Harry whispered. It was more than just making love—it was a release of anguish, fear and the painful pull of their magic toward each other exacerbated by forced separation. Holding her close, he luxuriated in the feel of her body against his; the feel of her magic blending seamlessly with his own. "I can't believe Justine's father did that to you."

"He…frightens me," Luna admitted with a shiver. She pulled his hand tighter around her chest. "His eyes when they looked at me in the room were empty, as if he did not see me as anything but an object. I've seen some purebloods look at me like that too, when they find I am proscribed. He could have shot me with his gun and not thought twice about it."

"I can't believe he would do that."

"You didn't see his eyes," she said, shivering again. She rolled over to face him. "Justine and Hermione are both here. Mr Granger I think is much nicer than Mr Finch-Fletchley."

"I think it's Fletchley for him, Finch-Fletchley for his wife and Justine," Harry said.

"How odd. Regardless, Mr Granger was nice. But I think Hermione rather hates me."

"Why do you say that?"

Luna looked him in the face and said, "Because she loves you, Harry. Or at least, she thinks she does, and with magic, often just thinking a thing makes it so. She wanted very much to be your first."

"But…"

"But she could not be. I think she knows that now, but that doesn't make her pain any less."

Harry nodded and held his new wife closer. He could not believe how wonderful it was to make love to a girl, most especially now that she seemed to enjoy it a little—those first frantic, bond-driven couplings were anything but romantic. But when he woke from the potions with Luna at his side, they just naturally slid into each other, making love slowly and with gentle need. It was beautiful, wonderful, and he didn't want it to end.

Neither did Luna. She climbed on top of him, and said, "One more time, Harry, before they come for us. It's going to be a long, exhausting day. We need what comfort we can take."

Being young and mostly fit, Harry could offer no objection.

* * *

sp

sp

**Author's Note**: Very special thanks as always to Teufel1987, JR and Miles for beta reading. If there are any major faux-pas, they are entirely of my own doing.


	5. Motivation and Politics

As always, Chap review responses can be found in my forums. Thank you.

* * *

**Chapter Five: Motivation and Politics**

Gertrude Appleby worked at the local Safeway in Consett, County Durham, as a stocker. Though her co-workers thought she was twenty five, in fact Gertrude was forty-five. She was a witch born of Muggles, and when no First Wives would consider her as a second wife and no wizard would even look at her as a first, she turned her eyes back to the Muggle World after leaving Hogwarts.

She snuck out quietly, hoping to avoid having her magic bound and a Veil permanently attached, and for the first few years looked around every corner in fear that she would be caught. But since she cast no magic, no one seemed to care.

She married Timothy Appleby of Consett in 1979. Death Eaters hunted them down and killed Timothy in August of 1980, almost a year to the day after they married. She tried her best to fight them, but the unbonded male wizards were far too strong for her. They left her broken and bleeding next to the body of her husband, her precious wand snapped into four pieces. She couldn't even attend his funeral, she was so badly hurt.

Without a coven to aid her, Gertrude was forced onto the dole for several years before she found work doing odd, menial tasks. In her day, Muggle Studies did not exist as they did in Harry Potter's day, and so she had little Muggle education beyond age 11. She went back to get her A-levels at least so she could do more than clean other people's houses.

Finally, after five hard years, she found work with Safeway, and switched stores every few years when people noticed she didn't seem to age as much as they did. She wore her veil twenty-four hours a day, seven-days a week, regardless of how it continually pained her. After Timothy and her own assault, she learned to live with pain.

She returned to Consett as a stocker last year, trying to avoid the places she and Timothy went. She let a small flat on the edge of the once thriving steel town, now reduced to a shell of its former glory by Thatcher's move to shut down the Consett Iron Company. The closure in 1980 gutted the town, destroying not just its economy but its very soul. It was a perfect place for an exiled, widowed witch to make a living.

Gertrude had a reputation among the town as being a bit of a slag, and to a certain extent this was true. She'd sleep with anyone willing for a few hours' distraction from the constant, low-grade itch and bother of the Veil, and for a brief echo of that precious year she spent with her Timothy. After all, it wasn't as if she had to worry about catching any Muggle diseases, now, did she? And while she took a few precautions when she was younger, she knew from the hot flashes during her fortieth year that she was no longer able to conceive with Muggles, so not even that was a concern.

Drugs did nothing for her, and alcohol only made her silly. It was all in all a miserable existence, but it was all Gertrude knew, and so she clung to it as hard as she could. And so, the reputation that Gertrude was a slag was true enough—she would sleep with any man at least once, but would rarely sleep with him a second or third time. She just knew if she truly gave her heart to another man, someone would come and cut it out again.

On the fifteenth anniversary of poor Timothy's death, after her shift, she grabbed a bottle of Cutty Sark Original because it was what she could afford, grabbed the new checker Donny Whitehead by the hand, and said, "Let's go have some fun tonight, love!"

Donny, being a rather pimply, simple-minded virgin, agreed wholeheartedly to this plan. Gertrude was not the most beautiful woman by any means, but she was a woman. For a rather pimply, simple-minded virgin, this was enough.

They took the bus, since of course neither owned cars, and walked from the stop to her flat in the twilight shreds of the day. Donny was nervous, but she laughed and joked with him. She was not a mean person, simply broken-hearted and lonely. She did not even see the two men in suits standing at the garden gate before the row of flats. Donny did, though, and said, "Who's that, then?"

Gertrude blinked and focused in on the two men. Each wore black slacks and jackets with a black tie over a plain white shirt.

"Donny, lad," she whispered, "maybe it'd be better if you go on home. Here, take the bottle. 'Least one of us will have some fun."

"You sure? I could…"

"Run on now, lad," she said. "Maybe tomorrow night."

With a last look at the two stony-faced men, Donny gave her a tight nod, took the bottle, and ran away. Gertrude took a deep breath and walked toward the two. "Well then, lads, do whatever you need to do."

The truth was that Gertrude was expecting a knife to the stomach. When the Sabbat sent men, it was usually former Death Eaters who had been bonded to the point where they were little more than squibs. This low level of magic, coupled with Sabbat custom, called for the use of the knife in killing those the Sabbat felt were not worthy of being dispatched by Hit Witches—people like Gertrude Appleby.

She was not, however, expecting one of the men to remove a strange black gun and shoot her at near point-blank range. Rather than a bullet, the gun shot out two wires that hit her chest like needles and then delivered a powerful surge of electricity.

What the agent firing the TASER was not expecting was what happens when electricity is forced into a magical core. Gertrude's veil dropped, she screamed, and her magic exploded outward in a purely instinctive release of defensive magic. Gertrude was not a powerful witch by any measure, but power of course is relative. The surge of instinctive magic—made visible by the crackle of the electrical current—blew both men into shreds, killing them instantly.

Two more men in full tactical gear ran forward firing a barrage of rubber bullets. Gertrude screamed again in pain and surged toward them, muscles buoyed by her desperate magic, rage and pain. She grabbed one terrified soldier by his armoured vest and threw him ten feet back into the car park. The second soldier, however, was more experienced. While as a witch Gertrude was physically stronger, she had no training of any kind and seemed to forget about the other threat for a moment.

While his companion went flying through the air, the remaining soldier ejected his cartridge of rubber bullets and replaced them with live ammunition, and then opened up to full automatic not on Gertrude's body, but on her legs.

Her left knee exploded under the barrage, which continued through her right fibula. She fell screaming and crying in pain, clutching at her ruined legs. The remaining soldier removed a pistol from his waist holster and fired six shots in quick succession. Six darts struck Gertrude in the chest, and after a moment her cries faded into drowsy silence.

The fallen soldier, who in fact was now a tactical agent of the Security Service, picked himself up with a groan and stumbled back to the now silenced, bleeding witch. "Fuck," the man said.

"Right," his companion said. "Sir Marcus is not going to like this."

~~Firebird~~

~~Firebird~~

Calliope Granger knocked on the door to the second floor East wing recover room, and when she heard a woman's voice call, "Come in," she did so.

Luna Lovegood stood completely starkers at a window, staring out into the cloudy, rain-swept morning. She turned to Calliope and shuddered. "I'm glad you're not Justine's father."

"I am too," Calliope said, unable to hide her scolding tone. "Why did you tell me to come if you weren't decent?"

"Decent?" Luna blinked large, silver-blue eyes. "I like to think I am a decent person. I don't intentionally hurt other people, and…"

"I meant you're not dressed."

"Well, that's true, but what does that have to do with decency?" the girl asked, genuinely confused. "I go skyclad at my home all the time. Many witches do, really. It is much more comfortable."

Just then Harry walked out of the loo dressed in a pair of old, overly large jeans cinched tight with a belt. The bandage over his shoulder was gone, though the curse wound remained as a large, black scab digging into the dip of his shoulder. Seeing him with the eye of a mother on behalf of her daughter, she was surprised at how well muscled the young man appeared to be. "Luna, could you help with me…oh."

He noticed Calliope studying him and blushed deeply. With a wince of pain, he managed to get the shirt on himself. Then he saw Luna, still naked, and said, "Why aren't you dressed?"

Luna blinked at him and started to tear up. "Do you think I'm so ugly I have to cover up?"

"Oh Merlin," Harry muttered. "No, Luna, I told you, you're beautiful. It's just not polite in the Muggle world to go starkers. Come on, love, put on a dress at least."

Huffing, Luna walked to trunk by the bed, opened it and dug out a plain floral print dress. She pulled it on and said, "Better?"

"Well, I don't mind seeing you naked," Harry admitted with a blush, "but I suppose it's better for everyone else."

He then turned and looked at Calliope. "Hello, Mrs Granger. Are Hermione and Justine okay?"

"They are," Calliope said, touched at his look of relief. He walked back to the ruffled, well-used bed and leaned against it while rubbing his arm. Hermione said last night his left arm was black and blue—this morning there was only the slightest hint of discolouration.

"Mr Potter," she began.

"Harry, please."

"Alright then, Harry. I want you to know that my husband did not realize what separating you and Luna would do. We would never have agreed to it otherwise."

"Justine's father would have," Luna said. "He would have liked to keep hurting me."

"Sir Marcus is not like that, Luna."

"Yes, he is. He's going to kill more witch-born, you'll see." Luna drifted to Harry's side and took his hand. "He's afraid of us, and men like him react to fear with hatred and violence."

Calliope shook her head and hugged herself against a sudden chill. "Are you…are you hungry? Sir Marcus isn't here, but Edwin is, and so are the girls and Mrs Finch-Fletchley. We have breakfast if you're hungry."

Luna's loudly growling stomach confirmed that neither had eaten properly in at least a day or more. "Food would be good," Harry admitted with a wry smile.

Calliope held out a hand to motion them out the door, but Luna mistook the gesture and accepted it in her own. The surge of shock that came from the contact was actually much stronger than Hermione's, and lasted longer, before a welcoming warmth flooded through her. However, she felt concern when she saw a trickle of blood from Luna's nose.

"Are you okay?"

"Just a probability headache," Luna whispered with a wan smile. Harry stepped across to the bed for a tissue. "Where are our wands?"

Calliope looked chagrined and said, "I'm sorry, Sir Marcus insisted we keep them safe for now. I don't even know where they are, but they're safe enough."

"But…" Luna began.

Harry gently squeezed her hand. "Remember the train, Luna. Justine's dad is probably just scared. I can't blame him, not really. Let's eat first then talk, okay?"

Calliope led the way for the young couple, purposely not looking at the few suited agents who guarded the home at Sir Marcus's insistence. Harry and Luna did notice, though they chose not to say anything about it. They went down to the first floor, and finally to the ground floor in the west wing of the manor when the smell of food reached them. Calliope led them into a spacious dining room and a table that could have easily seated forty people. Gathered around the near end were Hermione, her father, Justine and her mother.

Hermione stood and greeted Harry with a long hug. "I'm glad you're safe," she whispered.

"You too," he said. "Er, Hermione, this is…my wife, Luna."

"We met last night," Hermione said. "Are you doing better, Luna?"

"Yes, thank you. We had sex until the bonds stopped hurting. It was rather painful at first, but I must admit sex is getting better, and Harry is very gentle. I think you'll like it when it's time for you to bond with him."

Harry's cheeks virtually glowed. "Luna, we don't talk about that stuff in public."

"We don't? How odd."

"We don't talk about it in front of boys," Hermione amended. "Come on, you two, we've made breakfast."

Harry and Luna sat down and smiled greetings to Justine and her mother, before the two dug into the large pile of scrambled eggs, toast, bacon, sausage and beans. "Are you going to eat?" Harry asked.

"Just finished, thank you," Justine said, grinning. "Couldn't wait for you, it was too good."

Harry nodded his understanding, and then despite the audience, he and Luna devoured every edible morsel on the table—a meal that could have easily fed five adults. When they were done, Luna burped demurely into her napkin. "Oh, that's much better now. We haven't had decent food to eat since we first bonded."

Hermione cleared her throat, and with blushing cheeks aid, "Harry, I… Why Luna? I mean… I understand why it couldn't be me, now. I really do. But you've never even seen Luna. Why not Susan Bones, or Parvati Patil or someone you actually know?"

"Susan's going to bond with Neville," Harry said.

"How do you know that?" Justine blurted. "She hasn't told…oh. You saw it, didn't you?"

Harry nodded. "She and Hannah Abbott will bond with Neville. I bonded with Luna because…" He paused, looked to his wife and then shrugged. "It was always Luna. When I was a kid in the cupboard under the stairs, I'd try and dream about being somewhere else, and I dreamed of her. I couldn't quite see her face. Instead all I saw was her wedding crown. I've had visions of her on and off my whole life, only I didn't know for sure who she was until second year, when everyone told me to stay away."

"And I've had visions of Harry since I was a little girl," she said. "And so did Sybil Trelawney. I asked her about one of my visions last year, and she showed me a picture she drew of me on her wall."

"The picture was of her in my bedroom, Hermione," Harry said with quiet resolve. "It was a picture of Luna in my bedroom, and it came true. It was always Luna."

"But why?" Hermione asked, begging to know for sure.

"Harry and I are both actuating Aethers," Luna said.

"Mum told us in her book, Hermione," Harry said, explaining the code. "Because of Luna, bonds won't draw my magic down. I'm just as strong magically as I was before I bonded. And when I bond with you, you won't draw my magic down either. Mum did every ritual possible, dark and light, to give me every advantage in the coming war."

"Now wait one moment," Edwin began.

Luna interrupted him by saying, "You and your wife are going to have another baby."

Whatever protest Edwin was going to make died on his lips. Calliope stared at the odd witch with parted lips. "Excuse me?"

"You'll name her Paulina after the same play you used to choose Hermione's name. She'll be just and virtuous just like Hermione, and she'll grow up with Hermione and Harry's children as if they were siblings if we succeed. She won't live past her eleventh birthday if we fail." Luna smiled tiredly. "Beautiful children, if only we live."

"Our daughter is not going to marry anyone, not until she's of age," Edwin said, fighting through his shock at Luna's prediction.

"Actually, I probably will," Hermione admitted. "I've thought a lot about this, Daddy. One of the reasons Muggleborns find it so hard to compete for wizards is because their parents often try to prevent them from marrying. This makes the wizard's Dames angry at us for flouting custom, and really, once bonded we are already essentially married. If I bonded with Harry, but then didn't marry him, it would confirm every bad thing the Sabbats said about me in the minds of magical England. And I believe him when he says we are going to bond. I suppose…I suppose I _want_ to bond him. Better to have some of him than none at all."

"What are you…?" Calliope began.

"Hermione knows she's going to be Harry's second bond," Justine said. "We both figured it out last year. And…and I suppose I'm going to be the third."

Allison merely regarded her daughter with a cool, collected expression. "And then what?" the immaculately dressed woman said. "Say you 'bond' these two other girls, Mr Potter. What then?"

"Then…I bond a fourth witch," Harry said, blushing at the thought. "I don't know who—the visions I've had are just bloody."

"Language, Harry," Hermione muttered.

"He means literally bloody, Hermione," Luna said. "I haven't been able to see her either, only that the bonding is a bloody one. I don't understand what it means either."

"And with four bonded witches, you declare a Coven," Justine realized.

"Explain to me how these covens work, will you?" Allison asked.

"They act almost like political parties," Hermione said, having read the most prior to the ICW Yule Ball. "Each coven has its cadre of supporters. While the core of a coven is made up of the coven founders or their immediate descendants, other families can choose to join covens that have similar goals or views. A good example is the Dumbledore coven. All of Professor Dumbledore's wives are dead, but because he still lives, the coven still exists. Professor McGonagall's family joined his coven, and as senior of that family she acts as his Proxy Dame. Despite the covens being ruled by women, traditionally the coven has to have a wizard to remain active. When he dies, if he doesn't have a male heir of direct issue, the coven dies with him. The Bones Coven died with the death of Susan's father and Amelia Bones's husband. Amelia remains, but her coven is gone."

"And these covens—anyone can form one?"

"Only a wizard who can bond four wives," Justine said.

"Not every wizard can do that?"

"Most wizards can only handle two bonds," Luna said from Harry's side. "An exceptional few can handle three. However, the fact that there are only nineteen major covens active in the United Kingdom, some of which are centuries old, should tell you how rare it is. Harry could have easily formed a coven on his own without me, but it would have reduced his magic too much to be able to defend himself against Voldemort. His war is on two fronts—the Sabbat, and the Dark Lord. For the one he needs a coven; for the other he needs magic. That's where I came in."

"So, let's just say that Mr Potter forms his coven with you and our daughters," Allison continued. "What will you do with this sudden political power?"

"Get more power," Harry said, meeting the older woman's gaze squarely. "We can quietly send out an invitation to every single Muggleborn or Half-blood witch in England that our coven will accept them. They can join our coven, and even if a Pureblood serves as their dame, they will have a voice for the first time at the Sabbat. With coven members comes the required tithing, so we'd have money to buy power. Within a coven, Dames and Elders are a law unto themselves. We'd be in a real position to help Muggleborn witches. And with that power, we can start pushing our own agenda in the Sabbat and Wizengamot."

"And what if that doesn't work?" Allison asked.

"It won't, not entirely," Harry admitted. "I've seen all of us fighting for our lives. It's going to be a battle, but most revolutions are. But the fight has to be couched in legitimacy. If I just start killing covens, I'm another Dark Lord. But if I am a warlock defending his coven from unjust attacks, by custom of the Sabbat itself I'm perfectly within my rights. If we are ever to sway magical England to our viewpoint, I have to have righteousness on my side."

The rest of the table stopped and stared at him. Hermione cleared her throat and said, "You've thought a lot about this."

"Actually, most of that came from mum," Harry said with a sudden, disarming smile. "But I agree with it."

"So, are you just going to grab Miss Granger there, or my daughter, and ravage them today?" Allison asked.

Harry's cheeks burned, but Luna giggled. "Of course not, we're still bonding ourselves," Luna said. "You can't bond two witches at the same time."

"Why not?"

"The first bond forms a barrier," Luna explained. "It is not possible to poach a wizard who has already bonded, because for a second witch to bond with him, they must be keyed into his magic by the first wife."

"How?"

Luna flushed herself and looked down. "I'm not entirely sure. Professor Hooch covered that in a separate class for purebloods who weren't proscribed. They don't teach it at all to Muggleborns. But I can learn if I must now that I am first wife. Professor McGonagall would teach me, or possibly Professor Sprout. It will be different for Harry and myself anyway."

Allison looked to her daughter. "Justine, what do you think about this?"

Blushing herself, Justine glanced at Hermione who smiled weakly. "Well, Mum, there really aren't that many boys to choose from, and lots of witches competing for them. As a Muggleborn, despite my pedigree, I don't really have a chance on my own. It's rather nice to think I don't have to engage in the games the other witches go through. And I do like him, Mum. He truly is a kind and brave boy, and his magic is exhilarating."

"Yeah," Hermione said, lost a moment herself.

"Allison, what are you thinking?" Edwin asked.

"I'm thinking what any peer would be thinking," she said. "Justine won't be the first Finch or Fletchley to be sold off for political or monetary gain, and at least she's not opposed to the idea. You and Marcus can play soldier all you want, Edwin, but even Marcus agrees that politics is my forte. And what I see is a means of securing our daughter to a potentially powerful political union through marriage while giving us a direct means of communication with the magical world."

"But it's not going to happen yet," Harry said quickly, hoping to hold off a full-scale contribution. "We need to find someone. Mum's notes said I needed to find someone named Garrick Ollivander."

"Do you know where he is?" Edwin asked.

Harry shook his head. "Only that he's not here in England. Mum's people smuggled him out after Voldemort fell since the Sabbat would have had him killed immediately."

"I'll ask Sir Marcus to make some inquiries," the other man said.

"Tell him to be careful, sir," Harry said earnestly. "The Sabbat still wants Ollivander dead. If they hear of anyone looking for him, they'll act."

"Now that that's done," Hermione said, "you need to tell us everything that happened after you disappeared. And I mean everything."

After a long, painful discussion, Luna and Harry were given a tour of the manor, which was surprisingly large. They did not know exactly where the house was; only that it was situated in a spacious field of clover, which was surrounded by low stone walls and old English oaks. The wards extended to a hundred feet beyond the house itself; Harry and Luna could both see the ward stones that were buried at the cardinal points around the estate.

Harry did not talk to Hermione or Justine again, though he saw them on several occasions. The hurt he saw on Hermione's face tore at him, but he knew there was nothing he could do. That night, he and Luna gave into the urges of their bonds, and afterword lay in the darkness of their room, staring at the ceiling. "Hermione hates me," Luna said.

"I sort of, well, kissed her last year," Harry admitted.

Luna looked at him tensely, a moment of jealousy passing quickly into her normal, abstract expression. "Well, she is very beautiful. I suppose I can't blame you." She took his hand. "But for now, you're mine alone, do you understand?"

"I do," Harry agreed.

* * *

sp

sp

**Author's Note**: Very special thanks as always to Teufel1987, JR and Miles for beta reading. If there are any major faux-pas, they are entirely of my own doing.


	6. Hunting the Apostate

A/N: Chap 5 Review Responses are in my forums as normal. Also a quick note-if circumstances prevent me from posting as normal, I will usually put a note on my profile to let folks know.

* * *

sp

**Chapter Six: Hunting the Apostate**

On the evening of 3rd August, Sir Marcus Fletchley arrived back at the manor with an escort of two tactical team members in full gear and a coffin-like case in the large, open back of their vehicle. They drove around to the back service entrance where the other two men of his team waited. "The others?" he asked Watterson tersely.

"First floor parlour," the black-skinned agent said with a nod. "Did you receive Mr Granger's inquiry?"

"I did, and I have news, but let's deal with our subject first."

The other two tactical agents walked around to the rear of the Range Rover and pulled out the hard metal chest that held their subject. "Crikey, bloody thing weighs a ton."

Indeed, in the end it took four men to carry the container with one unconscious witch into the large wine cellar of the house. Once she was secured in their newly installed laboratory behind heavy mechanical locks, he dismissed the soldiers.

"The research team is to be kept separate from the rest of the house," he ordered. "The witches in this house are not to come down here, or even know it exists."

"Even your own daughter, sir?" Watterson asked.

Behind them, a woman's voice said, "Especially our daughter, Sam."

The two men turned to watch Allison Finch-Fletchley coming down the stairs into the cellar. "They did a fetching job down here, Marcus. Will it be enough to hold the subject?"

"We'll find out," Marcus said with a nod of dismissal to Sam.

The Security Service agent went and helped the tactical team members remove the drugged witch from the box.

"How did you find her?" Allison asked as she stood next to her husband outside the clear Plexiglas wall of the observation room. The interior was coated with a reflective material that allowed everyone to see in, but none to see out.

"Education records," he said. "We've identified hundreds of people whose education stopped at age eleven. Those that reappeared are the ones we're going to target. I lost two men taking her."

Allison raised one elegant brow as she looked at the rather plain, drawn-looking woman with the heavily wrapped legs. "_Two_ men?"

"Let's just say it is not safe to use a TASER on a witch-born. The new suggestion is a rubber bullet to the midsection from a sniper rifle from at least fifty feet. It will disorient them enough to deliver the drugged darts, but not kill them. It's astonishingly difficult to kill witches."

"Poor sods," Allison said. "I've already sent my report to Dame Butler at the Home Office. The boy was quite talkative to Hermione and Justine. He is convinced that he is going to marry them both."

"Over my dead body."

"Hopefully not," Allison said with a wry smile. "Marcus, our daughter would become a leading member of a potentially powerful political party within the Trickster's own government. Is it so different from that daft plan of yours to get her in close to the Earl of Shaftesbury's heir?"

"Anthony is a good lad!" Sir Marcus said. "Not some lay-about witch!"

"His father is a lost, bed-hopping hedonist, what makes you think his son will be different? But more importantly, your daughter is also a witch. She has said clearly she intends to marry within the trickster community—so why not marry into power?"

Inside the room, the captured witch moaned. "Impossible, she should be out for a day," Marcus muttered. "Sam?"

"On it," Watterson said. He casually reached into his jacket pocket and removed a large syringe, which he used to inject more sleeping agent into the witch's chest.

To his wife, Marcus said, "The researchers will be here within the hour, we just didn't know for sure when we would have our first subject. So, what's been happening here?"

"It's been an interesting day," Allison Finch-Fletchley said. "First off, this Dark Lord fellow from the first war is alive again somehow. Potter told us everything that happened. From those newspapers the Creeveys have sent, we know the Tricksters are purposely denying his return and are instead intent on vilifying the girls, not to mention Potter and his young bride."

"And his response is to marry our daughter?"

"Within an insane environment, it is a perfectly sane response," Allison said with a straight face. "More importantly, it will grant us direct and immediate access to the trickster's ruling bodies. If we could somehow place a tracking device on her…'

She let the possibilities hang in the silence.

Marcus ran a hand through his thick hair. "So you think this best?"

"Yes. For Queen and country, Marcus. This is the best way."

"Very well, you've never led me wrong before."

"Were you able to look up that name Mr Potter gave us?"

"What? Oh, yes. Easily enough. The man is making no effort to hide."

Allison looked back at the now thoroughly drugged witch. "Marcus, you know I support you in what we're doing. I'll continue to lead the Grangers where you wish them to go, but you must promise me that our daughter will never end up in a room like this."

"Allison…"

"Promise me, Marcus."

"Very well, I promise. But I cannot make the same promise for her friends."

Allison shrugged. "One problem at a time, love. Are you ready to go meet them, then?"

They left the wine cellar through the large locking doors, emerged onto the ground floor, and went up another flight of stairs until they reached the first floor parlour. At a card table on the far side of the room, the four witch-born kids had a series of books spread out. As he walked closer, Sir Marcus could hear them talking.

"…Garrick Ollivander has a standing death sentence on his head from both the Sabbat and the Wizengamot," Hermione was reading aloud. "He was the only member of Voldemort's Organization to be tried and sentenced to death, though he was tried _in absentia_ since somehow he escaped. This book speculates that he was smuggled out of the country by agents of the Dark Lord Morgan Murchison, the dictator of the Western Confederation of America, though we know from Harry it was actually Lily Potter's supporters who smuggled him out."

"There are so many things wrong with that statement, I'm not even sure where to begin," Edwin muttered from a couch nearby. He then stood to greet the newcomer. "Marcus, how went things?"

The four witch-born looked up from their books. The white-blonde girl leaned into Potter, staring at him in open fear.

"Well enough," he said to his colleague. Marcus liked Granger enough—the man was former military and willing to do whatever it took, but only up to a point. It was a point they ran into last night, and one that Sir Marcus could not completely forgive. "We found your man, Mr Potter. From what I was told, Garrick Ollivander was already listed as a person of interest by the Crown. 'Observation only,' is the term. The man currently resides in America."

"Harry, according to published history, this Ollivander is a Death Eater," Hermione said. "Why do you need to find him?"

"It gets complicated," Harry said. "But I don't think he's a Death Eater. Voldemort wanted him to make a special wand, but he refused."

Hermione blinked and stared. "What did you say?"

"Harry's mum was a greater revolutionary than Voldemort ever was," Luna said, all hint of hesitancy or shyness gone now that she was on a subject she knew. "Voldemort just wanted to kill women out of spite. But Lily Potter wanted to actually change the balance of magic in the world. Her group, the Order of the Phoenix, was dedicated to the notion of equality between witches and wizards in the magical world. They wanted to codify the right of an individual to marry who they wished, whether it be one person or a dozen. They wanted to do away with the magically draining aspects of bonding as it is currently practiced. They wanted to eliminate the Sabbat and Wizengamot and instead enact a democratic parliament based on individual liberty and representation, rather than representation by coven. And they wanted to remove the stigma of witches, or wizards, loving Muggles. Because of this, as soon as the dark-aligned Covens delivered Lily Potter to Voldemort, they purged the Order. My mum was one of the last victims, for which I suppose I should be grateful, as at least I had a few years to know her. Amelia Bones lost her whole family—the whole clan and coven, save for Susan, who never knew her parents."

Harry smiled and shook his head. "Well, give me this; I appear to like smart women. So, to the question, that's why I need to find Ollivander—I need to learn about wandcraft. Any ideas?"

"He's in New Mexico, in America," Sir Marcus said.

Harry closed his eyes. "What part of America is that? Sorry, geography was never my best area in school."

"The Western part," Hermione said meaningfully.

It took only a moment for Harry to get the implication. He sank back with a hopeless sigh. "Of course he's in the Western Confederacy. Why on Earth would he be someplace I can actually get to?"

Luna stared at him. "I never envisioned you as sarcastic."

"Er, sorry?"

"Well, I suppose no one is perfect. Being raised with the knowledge I would bond with you, I suppose I built up a fantasy you that is hard to measure up against."

"I'm not sure how to take that," Harry admitted. Luna smiled at him before kissing his cheek.

"It means that I'll just have to get to know you the old fashioned way."

~~Firebird~~

~~Firebird~~

The next morning, Harry and Luna sat quietly in the back seat of a Range Rover as Agent Watterson drove them to Heathrow Airport with casual competence while Sir Marcus sat in the opposing back seat facing them.

"What did you do when you touched Justine's chest?" he asked half an hour into the drive.

The question was so random Harry could only stare blankly for a moment. "Sir?"

"At your orientation, five years ago. You touched her chest. What did you actually do?"

"I…I'm not sure," Harry said. "At least, not then. I was new to magic, sir. I promise I didn't mean anything by it."

He looked to Luna. "You seem more knowledgeable about magic. When someone like Potter touches a girl's chest, what happens?"

"Normally he would be slapped," Luna said, staring anywhere but at Sir Marcus.

Sir Marcus took a deep, calming breath. "We both know that's not what I'm talking about."

"Yes, I do," Luna said. "But you frighten me, Mr Fletchley, and I don't want to tell you anything. There have been many like you. You truly believe that you are in the right—that you have Divine Blessing to do what you will, and so you do anything you want. You frighten me, and so I do not wish to tell you what you want to know."

"I believe Mr Granger already explained that we were unfamiliar with the bonding process," Sir Marcus said in a placating tone. "It was not our intent to hurt you."

"It wasn't his," Luna said. "You…you don't care. I am nothing to you, not a human being at all. Neither is Harry, or Hermione. I think you would even kill your own daughter if it accomplished your goals."

Marcus leaned forward grimly. "That is not a wise thing to say to a man who is helping you, Mrs Potter."

"I'm sorry," Luna said. "I speak only the truth. I see death in you."

"Luna, please," Harry whispered. He looked back at Sir Marcus. "I'm sorry about the train, sir. I didn't know exactly what the spell would do; only that they were trying to kill me and I wasn't good enough to stop them in a straight duel. I only stunned the one because I acted before they were ready. I would never hurt someone on purpose, not like that."

"There have been many who thought the same," Sir Marcus said, parroting Luna. "Regardless, I've decided to assist you as much as I can. But we are keeping this very quiet—we know your kind have ears in all of our ministries. We can get you a direct flight to Dallas, and from there a connecting flight to Santa Fe. But there are going to be some complications. First and foremost, you two are very obviously minors."

"But isn't marriage supposed to be an emancipating event?" Harry asked.

Marcus stared flatly. "Potter, you're fifteen. Your 'wife' is fourteen. The Crown would never recognize your marriage—both of you are under marriageable age. And because you are minors, you cannot make a connecting flight by yourselves. So, I've had to enlist some help."

They reached the airport an hour later; Watterson pulled up to the curb of their terminal and then pulled away, letting them avoid the rush of trying to park. Marcus did not lead the way, but rather motioned them to go. He remained a step behind.

Heathrow intimidated Harry, and reduced Luna to wide-eyed silence as she trailed along, clutching Harry's hand tightly. The terminal building they were flying out of was much like a shopping mall, with dozens of shops lining each wall and security gates leading further into the structure. What was most stunning, though, was the sheer force of humanity moving through the space.

"Busy time of the year," Marcus muttered. "Come on then."

He pointed them toward a large coffee shop which occupied a good portion of the ground floor of the terminal. They eventually found a table near the far side where Sir Marcus motioned for them to sit.

Just minutes later, an attractive Muggle woman in her early thirties with honey-brown hair styled in an elaborate knot at the crown of her skull walked up to the bistro, placed an order, and with a cup of steaming latte in hand, strode casually to their table. She wore a navy-blue skirt-suit over a cream blouse.

"You have very broad shoulders for a woman," Luna blurted before anyone else could speak.

"Those are shoulder pads, Luna," Harry said, having seen Aunt Petunia wear them occasionally.

"Why would she want to pad her shoulders? She's quite lovely without them."

The woman looked at the two teens and then at Sir Marcus with one elegantly arched brow. "Nicky," Marcus said, "may I introduce you to Mr and Mrs Harry Potter? Luna, Harry, this is a good friend of mine, Nicolette Parsons, although she normally goes by Nicky."

Nicky stared at the two teens with pursed lips. "Mr and Mrs?" she echoed in a glaring American accent.

"Indeed, although for this trip they are Luna and Harry Parsons, your younger siblings. I didn't think anyone would believe they were your kids." Sir Marcus reached into his jacket pocket and removed two leather-bound booklets and large manila envelope. He handed each to the kids. "Neither have flown before, or been out of the country at all."

"Or seen shoulder pads on a woman," Nicky said.

Luna wilted. "I'm sorry."

"It's alright," Nicky said, relenting in the face of Luna's obvious distress. "Well, I'll get them there. Is there anything you're authorized to tell me?"

"Do you remember that bombing in Chicago?"

Nicky's eyes narrowed. "You aren't even supposed to know about that."

"Exactly. And you're not supposed to know about these two, for the same reason."

She looked at Harry and Luna in time to see them remove their wands from the envelope, along with a stack of American dollars. "Put them away," Marcus ordered.

Instead, Luna took hers and tied her hair into a knot, using it to secure the hair. Harry slipped his into the pocket of his jacket. "I see," Nicky said. "How dangerous will this be?"

"I wish I knew," Sir Marcus said. "However, it is fairly important or you wouldn't be here. I've heard you've made quite the impression over the years."

Nicky rolled her eyes. "Fine. Alright, you two, come along. Sir Marcus, give Allison my love."

"I will. Be safe. You two, listen to Nicky. For the duration of your travels she is your guardian, and she knows very well what she's doing."

"Yes, sir," Harry said. "Thank you for your help."

"Oh, and Harry?"

"Sir?"

Sir Marcus handed over a second envelope. "This is not a gift, it is a loan. Some American dollars in case you find yourself in need. I expect to be repaid."

"Yes sir."

"Oh, don't worry, sir, Harry is quite rich," Luna said. "He just can't get to his money right now."

"Not quite what I was thinking. Go on, both of you."

~~Firebird~~

~~Firebird~~

Nicky travelled with a rolling carry-on case and a laptop computer slung over her shoulders. She wore pumps but walked fast, flexing taut muscles that spoke to Harry, at least, of physical fitness.

"She has lovely legs," Luna said as they walked behind. "Her bottom is also very nice, too. I don't think mine is that nice."

"Luna, you're only fourteen, and you can see she's a soldier too," Harry said.

"Well, yes, she looked just like Justine's father. Do all soldiers have such nice bums?"

"Er, well, I'm not sure I could say," Harry said.

Nicky stopped, took a deep sighing breath, and turned to face them. "Look, you two, I don't know what your deal is, and frankly I don't care. But from now on, I'm the boss, and the boss says no talking about the boss's ass, understood?"

"Can we talk about your breasts?" Luna said. "What cup size…"

"No," Nicky said.

Luna wilted again. "I'm sorry. I've just never travelled with a Muggle before, and I just…"

"What…did…you…call…me?" Nicky asked, eyes narrowed.

Luna actually backed up a step, clutching Harry's arm. "I'm sorry! I didn't mean to, I'm sorry…"

"She doesn't know any better," Harry said, meeting Nicky's glare. "Stop being mean to her, she's not trying to be mean to you."

Nicky expelled her breath explosively, spun around, and started walking again. Harry and Luna had to scramble to keep up. Harry watched as Nicky gave over her ID and tickets, and then motioned for Harry and Luna to move closer.

"Kids?" the guard said suspiciously.

"God, no," she said. "Worse. Brother and sister. They live with my dad and his second wife in London. I stayed with my Mom in the States."

"Anything to declare?"

"Other than them? No."

She placed her carry-on bag and satchel on the rolling surface and then walked through a strange square. "Next," the guard said.

With a hesitant look back at Harry, Luna stepped through the square. Instantly it beeped loudly. Luna screamed and squatted down in terror, before running back through and into Harry's arms. Nicky glared, while the security guards stared, dumbfounded.

"Er, first time flying," Harry said over her trembling head.

"Right," the nearest guard said slowly. "Do you have any metal on you?"

Harry's eyes widened when he realized what that gate was. Desperate, he thought of Piers Polkiss after he broke his leg kicking Harry when he was a kid. "We both have pins in our legs. Nicky didn't know—it was an accident a few years ago."

They were searched off to one side while an impatient Nicky talked to the security guards about bratty siblings. Finally, though, they were allowed to head toward their gate, which was even then boarding. "What the hell was that about?" she demanded.

"I guess our kind set off metal detectors," Harry said with a shrug.

"I don't like those things," Luna said fervently. "Why couldn't we just take an international Portkey?"

"Do you know how to make one?" Harry asked.

Luna blinked. "Well, no, and I suppose they wouldn't let us go to the Western Confederation anyway. And now we're going to go on a giant Muggle flying machine with those awful large wings and I'm really, really scared, Harry."

Nicky looked like she was about to chew them out again, until she heard that last confession. "There's nothing to be scared of. It'll be a nine and a half hour flight—you can sleep the whole time if you want. Nothing to worry about."

"Nine and a half hours in the air?" Luna whispered. "I…"

"I have a dreamless draught in my kit," Harry said softly. "You can use it."

"Really?"

"Really."

"Oh, thank you, Harry."

"You two are bizarre," Nicky declared.

* * *

sp

sp

**Author's Note**: Very special thanks as always to Teufel1987, JR and Miles for beta reading. If there are any major faux-pas, they are entirely of my own doing.


	7. Cowboys and Indians

A/N: As always, Chap 6 review responses are available in my forums. Thank you for reading.

* * *

**Chapter Seven: Cowboys and Indians And Witches, Oh My**

Harry didn't wait for take-off to slip Luna the dreamless draught. She curled up in the middle seat between Harry and Nicky and passed out. Harry, though, sat on the edge of his seat even as the plane began rolling down the runway. He felt his stomach drop as if he were pulling up on his broom, while outside, the sky fell away at twice the speed of his fastest broom flying.

Finally the plane reached its cruising altitude far about the clouds. Harry looked around the cabin with interest—the plane was crowded with people from all over the world, all heading for Dallas, Texas, home to Ewing Ranch with real life cowboys and Indians.

A sound made him look at Nicky as she began digging in her computer satchel. A moment later she removed what looked like a small make-up case, pulled down the tray in front of Luna, and placed the case on the tray. Harry couldn't help but look confused when she activated a switch. Instantly his ears popped and his magic tingled. Even in her sleep Luna squirmed.

"What is that?" he asked.

"Sound distorter," Nicky said. "A counter-intelligence tool. As long as we speak softly, no one will be able to overhear us. So what's the deal with you two? You're witch-born, right?"

Harry tried to hide his surprise under his Occlumency barriers, but with limited success. "Yeah."

"Great. Sir Marcus mentioned a bombing in Chicago. We know that your kind fought a battle there. We couldn't ID half the bodies, even though they were intact—that meant they weren't on the grid. None of the witnesses remembered a thing."

Harry shivered at the reminder that the Americans were still fighting their war. "I'm not a part of that. At least, I _hope_ I'm not a part of that."

"Look, my help is coming with a price," Nicky said. "I work for people who do not like having buildings blow up with no good reason. We don't like finding piles of unknown bodies in our streets. We know groups of you are fighting, but we don't know why. Sir Marcus was able to get our help with an understanding that you would cooperate. So, cooperate. What's going on? Is this just magical gang warfare?"

Harry shook his head, before he switched seats by lifting Luna from hers and placing her in his. Nicky blinked in surprise. "She's not that light, is she?"

"Our magic," he said. "If you were trying to lift her to hurt her, she'd become heavier than normal. But since we're bonded, she knows I can't hurt her, so her magic cooperates with my intent."

"Are you two really married?"

"Yeah."

"Why?"

"Because I was a threat," Harry said darkly. "I'd never done anything and I didn't want to do anything. I just wanted to grow up, maybe date, and if I was lucky someday find someone I liked and get married. But the Sabbat said I was too powerful, so they ordered me bonded on my fifteenth birthday. If I refused, they'd bond me by force, still my magic, or kill me."

"So bonding is like marriage? What would that do?"

"Bonding isn't the same as marriage," Harry said. He recalled The Talk with Snape. "I was taught that it's a biological instinct of our magic—witches bond with wizards to ensure protection and that the wizard remains with them. But something happened a long time ago, and instead of just mutual magical links, the bonds drain a wizard's power. The Covens use bonds to weaken and control wizards—they'll bond as many witches to us as necessary to render us weaker. So on my fifteenth birthday, they sent a woman to forcibly bond and rape me, so that I would have my magic reduced. Luna here came the day before, though, and we escaped the Covens."

"So how many bonds can a wizard have?"

"More than two would kill most wizards. Wizards who are strong enough for four can actually form a new coven, but their first wives are the ones who represent the coven in the Sabbat. Wizards have their own council, the Wizengamot, but they're only supposed to do whatever the covens say."

They continued talking, pausing only for an inflight meal that Luna slept through entirely. Harry told Nicky about the American Magical Civil war based on his reading of Riddle's book, and the two competing Ministries, and the wide demilitarized zone in the states that bordered the Mississippi River. He talked about wizard life expectancy, Veils, magic and elemental leanings. He realized even as he spoke that he wasn't supposed to tell her anything—that in a way he was betraying his whole world. And yet, he didn't feel bad about it at all. That world forced a fourteen-year-old girl to have to marry whether she wanted to or not. It forced him, a newly turned fifteen-year-old, to do the same. It killed his Mum and Luna's as well.

It was not a world he felt any loyalty to at all.

Nicky took notes rather than record their conversation, several times referring back to something Harry said earlier to clarify her own understanding. By the time they landed nearly ten hours later, Nicky had as comprehensive an overview of magic as it was possible to gain from a fifth-year student.

The captain announced they were landing soon. Nicky deactivated the distorter, stored her notes in her satchel, while Harry gently started rubbing Luna's chest, stimulating her magic until her eyes slowly creaked open.

"Harry?" she whispered. "I had a terrible dream."

"You weren't supposed to dream with a dreamless draught," he whispered.

"I dreamed they were waiting for us."

Harry felt a chill down his spine. "I'm sure it's nothing, love," he said softly. "How could they even know we're here?"

Outside, this strange new land looked flat and desolate compared to the verdant tones of the English countryside. He could actually see the air distorting over the runway as they came in for the landing. Fortunately Luna was still too drowsy from the potion to be frightened, and in minutes the plane taxied to the terminal.

"Sit tight, I'm checking in," Nicky said. She removed a large cell phone while around them other passengers stood to start collecting their things. After a moment she ended the call and nodded. "So far, so good. We'll have a two hour layover until our next flight to Santa Fe. That should give the two of you a chance to freshen up. Are we ready?"

Harry nodded while Luna blinked sleepily at her. "Can we eat? I'm quite hungry."

"Yeah, sure." Nicky stood and collected her travel case while Harry held her laptop case for her. By that time, most of the other passengers had already exited the plane. Holding hands with the still-drowsy Luna, Harry followed behind Nicky, trying to fight a surge of nervousness that made him jittery.

The moment he stepped from the plane to the boarding sleeve, he was struck by an intense heat. He looked back to see Luna visibly wilt as sweat pooled on her skin. "Oh," she said with wide eyes. "Why is it so hot?"

Nicky looked over her shoulder with a smirk. "Because it's August in Texas," she said, as if that answer was perfectly sufficient to explain the unnatural, Magic-cursed heat.

When they emerged into the actual terminal, the rush of air-conditioned cool felt cold compared to the heat of the before. Harry closed his eyes a moment as the cool air brushed away the sweat that had also beaded on his forehead, only to open them onto a nightmare.

Witches were duelling in the concourse.

Behind him, Luna gasped as she too saw the fight. What made it so surreal, though, was that none of the Muggle passengers noticed. They could not see the magic cast, and the duellers themselves seemed to be covered in Muggle Notice-Me-Not charms.

There appeared to be two groups of five or six witches each. Both sides appeared to be taking extra care not to cast anything but stunners or disarming jinxes, and were aiming as carefully to avoid the Muggles as they were to curse their opponents.

"Nicky, they're here!" Harry hissed.

Nicky paused just a moment and then continued walking as if he said nothing. "Keep going," she said. "Pretend you don't see anything!"

Harry fought not to look at the raging battle that was happening in front of everyone, while Luna clutched his hand convulsively. They did not even make it out of the gate area seating when one of the witches shouted, "There he is!"

Three witches from each group broke off from duelling each other and pointed their wands at Harry and Luna. Six stunners flew simultaneous, and without even thinking about it, Harry whipped out his wand and shouted "_Protego!"_

The stunners bounced off his shield, causing all six witches to straighten in surprise, while around them the press of people stared at Harry in confusion, or in some cases, amusement. He realized in their eyes he must have looked ridiculous.

And then at least three of the witches switched from stunners to blasting curses, and people stopped laughing at him. Harry's shield somehow continued to hold, but rather than absorb the blasting curses, his shield deflected them. Suddenly the ceiling above him, a chair to his right, and an old man holding a cup of coffee to his left all exploded at the same time with same terrible concussive force that destroyed the train in London.

Luna screamed in horror as the remnants of the old man sprayed across her face, while at the same time the blast of the two nearest explosions threw both Nicky and Luna into Harry, sending all three tumbling to the ground. Muggles began screaming and rushing out of the way while Nicky scrambled to her feet.

She pulled them to their feet next, hissing: "Come on!"

A red stunner struck her in her head and sent her spinning away through the air like a thrown rag doll. Harry cast a pair of stunners blind from the floor before scrambling back to his feet. "Luna, come on!"

"I don't like fighting!" she wailed as the two of them duck-walked behind a row of seats. The air cracked with the sound of gunfire. Harry stuck his head above a seat to see a pair of airport police firing pistols at some of the witches.

One of the women raised a shield that easily deflected the bullets, while the other cast a slashing curse. Harry winced as the two officers fell to the floor, while their heads fell separately. At least one of the witches started casting blasting curses wildly about the room, not specifically targeting Muggles, but not concerned for them either. Each curse resulted in a numbing explosion that caused more screaming, panic, and dust in the air.

Gleaming eyes peered at Harry through the dust. "_Expulso_!" he shouted while jabbing his wand.

A silver shield appeared and then shattered before his panic-powered curse. The witch made a muffled cry before the curse blasted her back against the wall.

"_Protego!_" Luna shouted.

Harry spun to see a weak but intact magical shield absorb a stunner from one of the other witches. He leaned over the side of her shield and shot his own stunner; the witch danced away from it, only to scream as a black curse struck her in the back, cast from yet another witch.

They were still fighting each other, Harry realized. He grabbed Luna's hand and dragged her behind another row of seats. He removed and un-shrunk his trunk and dug into his things until he found the cloak Dumbledore had given him right before the Quidditch Championship game.

"Harry, what are you doing?" Luna asked shrilly, while nearby another row of chairs disintegrated.

Without answering, Harry also removed his broom from the expanded interior, before re-shrinking the trunk and tucking it back into the pocket his trousers. "Do you trust me, Luna?"

"Well, it seems a bit late for that, don't you think?" she asked, wide-eyed.

He pulled the broom behind his still bent legs. "Get behind me, and then throw this cloak over you."

She did as he instructed, and to Harry's shock the cloak seemed to expand as they pulled it, until it covered not just him and Luna, but the whole of the broom too. "Okay, love, just hang tight," Harry said.

He felt her cheek against his back and her shaking arms around his waist. He pulled at the cloak enough to free his wand hand and pointed at a row of windows. "_Bombarda_," he shouted, while internally he thanked Remus Lupin for all his third and fourth year detentions. He cast twice more further down the wall before pulling his hand back under his cloak.

"Where is he?" a witch shouted.

Gritting his teeth, Harry pushed intent into the broom, and with an animalistic growl of fright from Luna, he shot the two of them through the first hole he blasted and out into the tarmac of the airport. Instantly, heat slammed into them, but Harry ground his jaw and flew on.

The airport was huge—much larger in terms of area than he was expecting. With the air awash with huge airplanes, he did not dare fly any higher, so instead he flew down the length of the long airport, flying over the Muggle motorway that seemed to bisect the airport along its length.

Once he cleared the airport proper, he followed the motor way until he spotted what looked like a convenience store just off the road. "Hold on," he said over his shoulder before diving down. Luna squeezed so tight it was hard to breathe, but he said nothing.

The two landed on the roof of the store. He took off his cloak, un-shrunk his trunk, and stored both. "Harry, where did you get an Invisibility Cloak" Luna finally asked.

He turned and looked at her—her face was covered in dust and a spray of blood, and he realized he probably looked no better. "It was my dad's. Bugger all, we can't go in there looking like this," he muttered.

She pulled her wand from some hidden pocket of her dress and pointed it at his face. Her _teregeo_ spell was gentle as it removed the blood and dust from his face. He did the same to her before he cast a cushioning charm on the ground below them. They hopped down from the roof holding hands, bounced once on his charm, and then walked inside.

Luna instantly drifted to the concession counter of the small restaurant portion of the store while Harry searched for maps. At the last, he had to ask the clerk about any bus stations. This finally involved him buying an overpriced street map, upon which the clerk marked where in Dallas the bus station was. Harry was surprised to find how far from Dallas proper they were—he had never heard of a town called Fort Worth, though of course he knew about Dallas from the telly. Vernon adored J.R. Ewing.

Finally he went back to find Luna, who was thrumming before the menu. "Please, Harry, I'm so hungry!" she said.

The girl behind the counter blinked at the blonde's accent. "Okay," Harry said, "what do you want?"

Luna ordered two cheeseburgers and crisps. Harry, who ate on the plane, was nonetheless hungry and ordered the same, with milkshakes for them both. The girl stared at their skinny frames and finally said, "Okay, whatever," and took the money Harry handed over from the envelope Sir Marcus had given him.

At least they weren't going to starve in this land of cowboys, Indians, and angry fighting witches, Harry thought.

They sat at a booth and ate while Harry studied the maps. "I can get us to the station easily enough," he muttered. "I just hope the Americans can't trace casual magic."

Luna merely nodded around a mouthful of hamburger. It was not the best-tasting food in the world, but for two hungry witch-born it was rich enough in calories to make it worth it. "So, do you know any defensive spells besides the shield?"

She shook her head. "I just finished my third year, Harry. I only know the _Protego_ charm and the stunner because Daddy taught them to me this summer."

The girl behind the counter stared at them as they threw away the empty paper baskets that once held enough food for four, but didn't say anything. Harry and Luna walked back outside and then to the back of the store. Hiding as best he could from any prying eyes, Harry retrieved his broom and cloak again from his trunk, and in moments they were flying toward the bus station.

Although, after further consultation of the maps using the highways as a compass, they found they were in fact going the exact opposite direction from the bus station. Navigating from the air proved to be more difficult than either Harry or Luna anticipated.

Eventually, though, they reached the station. Unfortunately, the only bus that was going where they wanted to go was an overnight bus, so they found themselves stuck in the bus stop for the next eight hours. He had time to go through what money they had remaining—the bus tickets would have eaten quite a lot of the money Sir Marcus had given them if Harry bought two tickets. So he didn't, and hoped to Merlin the bus wasn't full.

During their long wait, twice homeless people came by begging or even demanding money. One man even tried to touch Luna. Harry didn't dare use magic, so instead he just pushed the larger, foul-smelling man away.

Or at least, that was his intent. Instead, the man flew back as if hit with a battering ram. The few other people in the station stared at Harry a moment, but no one mentioned anything. A few minutes later the police arrived, but by then the startled indigent had left the building and Harry and Luna apparently didn't look like threats.

It was the most painful waiting Harry had ever done. Finally, though, he let exhaustion catch up and took a quick nap, using Luna's lap as a pillow. An hour later, he returned the favour for her. An hour after that, they used some of their dwindling money for dinner.

Finally, though, their wait came to an end. By then, others had arrived at the station for their bus ride, but it seemed obvious it was not going to be a full ride. So, Luna wrapped herself in the invisibility cloak and walked right in front of Harry. The driver never noticed the strange gap between Harry and the large, heavy set woman who spoke only Spanish in front of him.

The bus did fill up a little with a handful of last minute stragglers, but even so Harry was able to take a double seat by himself, thus ensuring a seat for Luna. An hour into the overnight, twelve-hour drive, Luna removed the cloak, sure that no one would notice, and she was right. Thus no longer having to hide, Harry was able at last to give into the bone-tapping exhaustion that had made it so hard to stay up to when the overnight bus was scheduled to leave. His little nap got him thus far, but exhaustion continued to pull at his eyes.

"Sleep, Harry," Luna said to him, patting her lap for his head while playing with his hair. "I slept on the plane, I'll be fine."

"Okay," Harry said, yawning. He lay down on her lap, and instantly sleep took him.

~~Firebird~~

~~Firebird~~

He woke with a snort and sat up, rubbing his eyes. Luna's head was turned toward the window, but her mouth was open and a trail of drool had run down her chin to drip onto his cheek. "Urgh," he muttered, wiping at the spittle.

Outside, dawn lit the world into a colourless, endless field of alien grey shapes. According to the rout circular, they were due to arrive in Albuquerque right at 7 A.M. Harry didn't have a watch, but he guessed from the dawn that they must be close. Ahead of them, through the windows, loomed the largest mountain Harry had ever seen. While the area around them was desolate desert, the mountain was covered in trees and dominated the whole sky.

"Luna," he whispered. "Look!"

Luna came awake with a start, wiped the spittle from her chin, and stared out the window at the mountain. "My goodness," she whispered. "That is quite large. But of course, Scotland has some rather large mountains as well."

"It doesn't look the same," Harry insisted. And it didn't; this mountain rose from the flat plains of the desert, making it look larger than perhaps it really was.

The two teens sat side by side and watched the mountain loom taller and taller, until it slid past to their right as the bus drove through a gap between peaks. As they crested the top of the pass, the city of Albuquerque stretched out before them in a wide, low river valley between the foot of the mountains they just crossed over, and the rise of a mesa on the far side of the city. It was breath-taking.

Then they drove into the city itself, and… "Well, it looked good from a distance, at least," Luna said primly. "Up close it looks rather…dirty."

Harry merely nodded in silence, grateful that they had arrived safely. The bus stop when they arrived was—like the rest of the buildings around them—built of wood and a mud plaster. Harry and Luna started to depart when she pulled at his sleeve and pointed. Right outside the bus walked a man and a woman both in blue jeans and button-up plaid shirts. While they looked normal on the outside, inside, they brimmed with magic—earthen for the woman, fire for the man. Witch-born under veils.

"Under the cloak, now!" Harry whispered.

Moments after the last person departed, the two witch-born stepped onto the bus, walking slowly down the aisle. "Are you sure he was on this bus?" the woman asked.

"That's what Arlene said," the man said. "They pulled it right out of the bus clerk's mind. It's a shame brooms don't leave a magic trace. If not for that clerk at the store in Dallas, they'd have never traced him to the bus line."

"They must have slipped out earlier. But just to be safe, '_Hominem-revelo'."_

While Harry was admittedly terrified, his mind for some strange reason dwelt on the fact that the _Revelo_ syntax was backward when used to detect humans, and how very odd that was.

Somehow, though, the spell could not pierce the cloak. "That's it, then, they're not aboard," the witch said. "Let's go."

When they were gone, Harry and Luna got out of their seats, still under their invisibility cloak, and made their way off the bus, barely beating a cleaning crew. They did not hesitate, and in minutes were airborne again on Harry's broom.

They stopped on the edge of town for a patently unhealthy breakfast and a map. "It's only eighty or so miles," Harry said. "We can do that on broom easy."

Luna sighed. "Okay."

Harry was not above a little sight-seeing, and with Luna clutched tightly at his back, and the cloak hiding them, he left the highway to Santa Fe and flew over the sides of Sandia Peak, exulting in the views. While the land west of the mountain was flat and desolate all around, he could see miles and miles of it.

Finally, though, purpose drove them forward and Harry flew high over the New Mexican desert. At their altitude, the air was not as hot and the breeze felt comfortable. Below, the whole world seemed to unfold before them. "I wonder what it would be like to live here?" he said aloud.

"Hot," Luna said. While flying direct would have been faster, Harry followed the highway on the map to be safe. They flew through Santa Fe and followed as the highway curved around Thomson Peak and toward the foot of Bear Mountain.

The town of Pecos was nestled snugly between two mountains at the mouth of a river that ran down from the Santa Fe National Forest. The town itself seemed to be built around the giant, pill-shaped flood plain of the river, which resulted in a huge swathe of green in an otherwise brown town, baked under a long, hot summer.

Eventually, by drifting low and examining numbers and street signs, they found the address they were looking for. "That doesn't look like any home I've ever seen," Luna said, staring distastefully at the low, long metal rectangle that rested on the side of the western slope looking over the town. The otherwise empty road on either side stretched in the odd silence that pervaded the town. They heard cars in the distance, but most of the traffic appeared to be heading up the valley from Pecos into the park, or leaving Pecos from it. This far out on the outskirts, on a summer weekday, there seemed to be no movement at all.

The trailer was surrounded by an aged, unpainted wooden fence and what Harry guessed was a box for the post, with a dilapidated old pick-up truck with faded paint and mud-encrusted license plates parked in front.

As Harry looked closer, though…

"It's filled with Magic," Luna said, blinking. "How odd ...why didn't we notice at first?"

"Notice-me-not charm?" Harry guessed. "A weak one, maybe?"

After storing his cloak and broom, he took Luna's hand and the two walked up the hard, packed earth toward the trailer. A set of rickety wooden steps led to the door, which was perhaps four feet up from the ground. Once there, Harry pressed a button by the door. He heard nothing, but both he and Luna could see a ripple of magic as the button activated something within the home.

A moment later the door cracked opened to reveal a huge Hispanic woman with shoulders almost as broad as the door, a face filled with warts and sunspots, and the magical core of a squib. "What?" she said in a brusque, heavily accented voice.

"Er, hello," Harry said. "We're looking for Garrick Ollivander."

"Why?" she said, barking the words almost like Hedwig would do. Harry felt a brief hope that his owl was enjoying the Lovegood residence, where he sent her when he and Luna fled the Lloyd home.

"I was told he might be able to help me," Harry said.

The woman stared at him for a moment, before looking to Luna. Without another word she slammed the door on them.

"That did not go anything like I expected," Luna admitted. "I would say she is much like your uncle, but that seemed to be mostly muscle."

A moment later the door opened again and the same woman said, "Come in."

With one last look at each other, Harry and Luna clasped hands and walked into the home of the apostate.

* * *

sp

sp

**Author's Note**: Very special thanks as always to Teufel1987, JR and Miles for beta reading. If there are any major faux-pas, they are entirely of my own doing.


	8. Apostates and Dark Lords

A/N: Responses to what few reviews there were can be found as always in my forums. Thanks for reading.

* * *

sp

**Chapter Eight: Apostates and Dark Lords**

Once through the door, Harry had no doubt they were entering a magical home. Despite the rundown, unpleasant exterior, the interior opened into a wide, elegant home with ceramic tiled floors, a massive unlit fireplace to his right, and a kitchen easily as large as the Dursleys' parlour. The back wall was comprised of glass windows, through which he could see a large swimming pool. A young, plump girl with the same colouring as the woman stood at the edge of the pool while a man was in the water, inviting her to jump with skinny, pale outreaching arms.

With a happy squeal, the girl did so, splashing wildly and laughing as she did. The wide-bodied squib woman led them through the obviously expanded living room and into the back area, which was noticeably cooler than the front. The property seemed large, with a healthy, vibrant garden of native plants, succulents and a red, volcanic stone where sod might have been in more humid regions, all surrounded by a high brick fence. On the patio between the house and pool, a pagoda provided shade for a wrought-iron table and ten comfortable looking chairs.

"Have a seat, children," the man said from the pool without looking at them. "Esmeralda, love, would you please fetch some tea for our guests? I'm afraid, dears, we only have American tea. It took five years for me to be able to drink it, but now I'm afraid I've become rather partial to it. Going native, you might say." To the girl, he said, "Do you wish to swim some more?"

"Yes, Papa!" the girl said happily.

They watched as the man climbed out of the pool while the girl, who might have been seven or eight, continued to swim. He was healthy wizard—thin and lank—but he was also ancient, easily a century or more in age. Despite that, he carried himself with a subtle grace and strength as he charmed himself dry and slipped on a white robe.

"Is she yours?" Harry asked.

Garrick Ollivander laughed as he sat. "Mine? Oh heavens no. But for all that, I've raised her. Her mum was a victim during one of the many border conflicts—this time with Central American wizards working in a coordinated strike with the Easterners. Esmeralda's husband was killed, as were her two older children. Squibs, you see. She has been my constant companion since then. So, to business. You arrived somewhat later than expected, Mr Potter."

The general sense of unease Harry had been feeling crystallized. "You knew I was coming?"

"Oh, of course," Ollivander said. "The Muggle government here has hundreds of magical moles, from both our side and from the Easterners. When an inquiry from England came in on my name, we knew you would be coming soon. You, or another from your mother's group. There is a reason I do not hide, Mr Potter. I am a lightning rod, if you will. During the last flare up, Morgan set no less than five ambushes for Eastern Hit Witches attempting to assassinate me. Given the nature of wizarding warfare, that is quite a high number of enemy kills."

"Are you going to kill us next?" Harry asked, ready in an instant to pull his wand.

Ollivander stared at him, surprised, before chuckling softly. "Kill you, Mr Potter? When I owe your mother a life debt? You look surprised."

"I am."

"It was her Order who freed me from He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named," the old wizard confessed. "And it was they who got me out. A lovely young witch named Dorcas Meadows and my old friend Benjy Fenwick broke me out of the prison where I was held. Benjy, poor lad, died in the attempt. Dorcas got me free of the wards and provided me with the international Portkey. I heard later she was killed in the first wave of the purges after your mum died."

"Did you know Selene Lovegood?" Luna asked softly.

"I did," Ollivander confirmed. "She was, like yourself, a truly beautiful woman."

Luna beamed.

While Harry himself believed Luna was quite pretty, when the woman who looked like an adult, Hispanic Gregoria Bulstrode walked out and Ollivander smiled adoringly at her, he suspected the older wizard had a different definition of beautiful than most people did. Surprisingly, the woman smiled back at Ollivander, touching his hand briefly before she walked back to the pool and summoned her thick-bodied daughter from the water.

"This isn't anything like I thought it would be," Harry confessed.

"Oh, this is just the eye of the storm, lad," Ollivander said. "The Dark Lord Morgan Murchison is looking forward to meeting you. He should be here in an hour or so." The old wizard seemed to take delight in pronouncing Murchison's international title.

Luna's beaming smile faded. "Is it true that he eats babies for breakfast and rapes ten witches a day?"

"On Rye bread toast, to be sure," Ollivander said with a laugh. "As for witches, your young groom here is in greater danger than you, my dear. The man has marched in as many Gay Rights parades as he has fought battles against the covens. One can get labelled a dark lord for many reasons, but primarily it is when a strong wizard refuses to bond with a woman and fights when cornered. In the meantime, you came to learn about wands, I'm assuming?"

"Yes, sir."

"Let me see yours, please."

Harry handed it over after only a moment's hesitation. Ollivander smiled when he held it. "Ahh, the Lloyd battle wand. Quite an honour to wield this one—thirteen inches, Hawthorn and dragon heartstring, with a delimiter threshold much higher than today's wands."

He handed the wand back to Harry and sipped at the foul-tasting, _cold_ tea. "Well, the secret to wands is really quite simple. In fact, it is so simple that most are astounded. Disgusted as well, but astounded. The answer is this: pee."

"Excuse me?" Harry said, blinking.

"Urine, Mr Potter. Among other things, of course. You of course know about our elemental leanings of magic—earth, water, air and fire. But what many do not realize is that these leanings also play a role in magical foci. The four humours, to be precise. Yellow Bile, Black Bile, Blood and Phlegm as the ancient philosophers described them. Of course, a lot has been lost in translation since Galen and Hippocrates, and we use the terms in a slightly different fashion. But, to be clear, the four humours as we know them today are urine, faeces, blood and spit. For a wand to properly channel magic it must have two elements—an appropriate core of a magical property, such as dragon heartstrings, phoenix feathers, a unicorn hair, etcetera; and it must be housed within a length of wood that has been given magical properties by the humours of a witch or wizard. Think of your Herbology class—magical flora is magic _because_ our intent makes it so. Of course, the most important aspect of this secret is that the humours are gender specific."

Ollivander pointed at the wood. "That battle wand was made for Gryffindors, and so was soaked in the urine of a Gryffindor witch. But because it was meant to be used in war by a wizard, her urine was mixed with a wizard's—probably the very one the wand was first intended for. And so it works better for a man than most."

"Mum said that wands were causing wizards not to be fertile," Harry said.

"Well, yes, of course," Ollivander said. "Wands are not just conduits of magic, Mr Potter, they are magic themselves. They will feed magic back into the user. Feminine and masculine magic are significantly different. While they depend on each other, they are also opposites, much as fire and water are elemental opposites. Over the centuries, as the feminine magic has forcibly fed back into the masculine, it has weakened our magic. And as our magic is thoroughly mixed with our physiology, it has had an impact on our very genetic structure. It has made male foetuses more fragile. For instance, Merlin was not born of a witch—he was born of a Muggle woman."

"That's impossible," Harry said.

"No, that's evolution, Mr Potter. Merlin was one of the last great Romano-Celtic wizards born before the Norse-trained witch Rowena brought a wand with her to Vortigern's bed. In those days, while rare, it was not unheard of for wizards to be born of Muggle women. There were more wizards born all around, to be sure. Granted, constant warfare made the ratio not much different now, but there you have it."

"So why keep this secret?" Luna asked.

"Fear and power, would be my guess," a new voice said.

Harry scrambled to his feet and stared at the Dark Lord Morgan Murchison.

When Ollivander hinted that Murchison was homosexual, Harry's mind started producing wild, stereotypical images of an effeminate, flamboyant figure in pink robes and pinkie rings. Catching his first look at the dictator of the Western American Confederation, he chastised himself for being foolish. Cedric was not flamboyant at all, and in fact was one of the most masculine people he'd ever met.

Until, he amended, he saw Morgan Murchison.

The Dark Lord, as the Covens named him, was tall for a wizard, standing easily over six and a half feet tall. He had dark blond hair cut so short his scalp was visible, with wide, powerful shoulders and a broad chest that tapered down to a thin, athletic waist. Rather than robes, he wore faded, comfortable-looking blue jeans and a plain white, long-sleeved button-up shirt with the sleeves rolled up to his elbow. Topping it off was the only even slightly stereotypical feature of the man—a broad-rimmed, leather cowboy hat with a turkey feather sticking out.

"Harry," Luna said, eyes-wide. "Could you look like him, please?"

Harry gaped at his new wife. "Luna!"

"But he's so pretty!" she said. "Look at his magic. It's so strong!"

Indeed, Murchison's magic was strong, with vibrant browns and reds of the earth. Which, given his new understanding of wandlore, meant… "You made his wand?" Harry asked Ollivander.

The other wizard was staring at Harry, as if waiting for him to make the connection, and burst out laughing. Murchison himself shook his head. "Disgusting, was what it was. But it worked." Without waiting for an invitation, Murchison walked to the table. Harry watched, astounded, as the man casually moved a chair with wandless magic before sitting. "So you're Harry Potter. My people are 'bout fit tied trying to find you. That showdown in Dallas was a fuck-up if ever there was one, no doubt 'bout it. Frankly you're lucky you got out alive."

"Those were your people, sir?" Harry asked.

"Half were. The other half were a group of EastCons. We got word through one of our moles that you were coming in—they did too. We haven't managed to trace it back to the source yet, which means whoever was helping you was pretty good. If your helper is found out, though, they're in trouble."

Harry winced at the thought of wizards coming after Sir Marcus. "What are you doing to do with us, sir?"

"Not sure yet," Murchison admitted. "I haven't had much luck working with the English."

"You mean Voldemort?"

"I mean Tom Riddle. Albus isn't a bad sort—had a nice romp with him a good century or so ago, but he's so hemmed in he can barely breathe. His and your mum's mail had to go East through Asia to reach us, and it was just too much trouble. Not surprising, since England was the root of it all."

Esmeralda brought out a large tray filled with eggs cooked with peppers, onion and cilantro, and a basket of steaming tortillas. "_Gracias_, babe," Murchison said with a wink at the large woman.

She laughed and waived away the wink before walking back into the house.

"Help yourselves," Morgan said, as if it were his house. He did as he said, piling some of the eggs into a tortilla and folding it cleverly to eat as a burrito while leaning back in his chair, one leg crossed. Harry saw with a start that the man wore dragon-hide boots.

"Thank you!" Luna gushed. Harry, still full from their meal an hour ago, merely studied the older man.

"This isn't like anything I read about," he finally said. "I feel like I just discovered the devil is a saint."

Murchison snorted, while Ollivander laughed. "Make no mistake, boy, I'm no saint," Murchison said flatly. "I killed the two witches they forced on me, same way your Tom Riddle did his. Had one of my boys shoot them dead right in front of Salem. I've blown up buildings and tortured people for information. I've used all three of the Unforgivable Curses at least once, and fuck me if I didn't like it at least a little. And if I had sufficient cause, I wouldn't hesitate to torture and kill either one of you."

Luna started choking on her breakfast taco. Harry carefully slapped her back while Ollivander poured her some tea.

"All right there, missy?" Murchison said.

"One would think I'd be used to death threats by now," she said breathlessly. "Everyone seems to want to kill us."

"They're both actuating aethers, Murchison," Ollivander said.

Murchison's eyes narrowed. "I know the Potter boy was. How'd you know about this other one?"

"Why else would the covens want her so badly?" Ollivander asked.

"Well, to be fair, my family was proscribed at the end of the purges, right before they killed my mum," Luna said.

"Yes, there is that," Ollivander said sadly. "So, children, tell me your story."

Hesitantly at first, Harry and Luna told their story, starting with their mutual visions of each other, the Sabbat's orders, and finally of their mutual mothers' encoded messages. When they were done, Murchison had his square jaw in his large hands, eying them both. "Now that's an interesting approach," he finally said.

"Not surprising, really," Ollivander said. "Lily was never one to attack from the front if she could kill you from behind."

"You make her sound Slytherin," Harry said.

"He makes her sound smart," Murchison disagreed. "Honour has no place in real war, boy. Honour gets you killed. If it comes down to you or someone trying to kill you, you do whatever you have to do to survive. And it's always safer to kill them before they can get a spell off. Still, it's naïve to think the Brits are just going to sit there and let the boy form a coven. They've killed covens before."

"But Morgan, think of the beauty of Lily's plan," Ollivander said. "A full quarter of the magical population is Muggleborn, with another fifth of it being half-blood despite the stigma of it. If they knew beforehand, do you really think the Covens would order the mass slaughter of so many? Even if they did, the fact the Sabbats did so would be just the catalyst we need!"

"Could we do without the slaughtering part?" Harry asked.

"You think the covens are just going to let go of a fifteen hundred years of control because you ask nicely?" Murchison said. "You'd get some sympathizers—hell, we have sympathizers in the Eastern covens ourselves. We have hundreds of witches who fight for us, and bond with us even though our new wands don't weaken us. They bond with men they love, and the old system of force-bonding doesn't happen on our side. If a bloke is willing to take a second or even a third wife, more power to 'em. But it's not something we force."

"And yet somehow we haven't been outbred yet," Ollivander noted with a smile. "We're proof that the coven's methods simply don't work, and are certainly not sufficient to justify the forcible raping of young boys."

"Or girls, sometimes," Luna said.

Murchison stared at her a moment before nodding. "That is true. Doesn't happen often, but I have heard of cases where troublesome witches are bonded off to older wizards as a second or third wife, and brow-beaten into line by the other wives; or worse yet, sold to Goblins. That doesn't happen here at all. Not even the EastCon people were stupid enough to let Goblins get a foothold in America."

"So, sir, what's going to happen now?" Harry asked.

Murchison studied the two teens for the longest time in silence, before he finally said, "I'll have to take this to the foreign affairs committee. Despite what you might think I don't work in a vacuum here. Your whole plan is based on you two getting back to England, but they won't let you back without wiping your minds to kingdom come, if they don't kill you outright."

"And in the meantime," Ollivander said, "I'm going to teach both of you how to make wands. It is, after all, why you're here."

~~Firebird~~

~~Firebird~~

Gertrude Appleby stared blankly up at the harsh chemical lights, her jaw hanging open with one last grimace of horrified pain. The back of her head, neck, and in fact entire body was already starting to darken as the blood settled. The researchers did not wait, and already her chest was cut open in a large Y-shape, with her ribs sawed off for easier access to her internal organs.

Around her, three researchers in full body biohazard suits conducted the autopsy with professional detachment, while outside Sir Marcus Fletchley and his top aide Samuel Watterson watched while speaking in low tones.

"…civilians and two police officers were killed," Watterson finished his report. "Local police are spinning it as a case of domestic terrorism, but the Feds know it was Tricksters trying to intercept our package. They told me confidentially that all their agencies are compromised."

"Any word on Nicky?"

"Sprained neck, two broken ribs. She's back home in Washington on medical leave."

Sir Marcus nodded darkly. "That black ops flub she was involved in a few years ago involved the Yanks experimenting with Trickster squibs. They found that with mental conditioning techniques, the squibs made astonishingly effective special operations agents. They shut down and liquidated the program when one broke his conditioning."

Watterson shuddered. "I hate to think of it. They ever put the rogue down?"

"No, he put them down, hard, and then disappeared. The subject in there proved beyond a doubt how hard they are to kill."

Watterson pulled out a notepad. "Immune to most standard poisons and weaponized bacterial agents. Showed some susceptibility to viruses but was able to recover in a matter of hours from what would kill most humans. Not to mention their physical durability and accelerated healing." He whistled. "You really had them hit her with a cricket bat?"

"In the head." Sir Marcus confirmed it without blinking an eye. "The blow would have cracked our skulls—it gave her a mild concussion."

"So what finally killed her, sir?"

"Ballistics tests."

"And?"

"We're resupplying all of our men with Desert Eagles. Nothing below 12 mm had the stopping-power we're looking, so we're switching to the 12.7 mm."

"That's a big gun."

"She took a .35 to the chest and kept coming when she realized we were going to finish her off," Sir Justin said. "With those damned magic shields of theirs, we need something that will put them down with a single shot when an opening comes up. I'm also ordering shotguns as a back-up. Automatic weapons have not proven as satisfactory as we hoped."

Watterson made a note. "So, what next?"

"Sandra Shatley of Nantwhich, Cheshire East," Sir Marcus said. "Age 23. She showed up at a sixth form at age 17 to get her A-levels. She enrolled in Reaseheath College but dropped out after a year. Currently working at a bookseller. She's single, young, estranged from her parents, and has no record of ever requiring health services."

"I'll get the team ready with the new equipment."

Sir Marcus nodded dismissal and didn't bother to watch as Watterson left. He continued to watch the autopsy, looking away only when his lead researcher stepped out of the clean room, freshly divested of his biohazard suit. "That was remarkable," the tall, balding man said with a gleam of excitement in his eyes. "The blood work and genetic sampling alone with keep us busy for years to come. There were actual divergences in the placement of organs, and evidence that her organs actually changed as she aged. For instance, her liver appears to have actually shrunken given surrounding tissue, and her lymphatic system is just completely different from anything I've seen before."

"We'll have a new subject for you soon enough," Sir Marcus said.

"Excellent," the man said. "Another female, I presume?"

"Yes."

"Good. I've harvested several eggs from this subject. I'll do the same for the next to study fertility rates. Simply amazing."

The man walked out of the room to make some notes on his computer while Sir Marcus watched intently. With the next subject, they would start looking at what _did_ make them sick.

* * *

sp

sp

**Author's Note**: Very special thanks as always to Teufel1987, JR and Miles for beta reading. If there are any major faux-pas, they are entirely of my own doing.


	9. Honeymoon's End

A/N: Chap 8 review responses are in my forums like normal. Thanks to everyone for reading and reviewing, I do appreciate it!

* * *

sp

**Chapter Nine: Honeymoon's End**

On August 9th, ten days after Luna walked into Number 4 Privet Drive in Little Whinging, Surrey, the initial bonding period ended.

Of course, having literally switched countries, undergone a life-threatening battle and been briefly tortured by one of his friends' dad, Harry did not realize why he woke up dragging so badly. He and Luna shared a room on the southern end of the trailer, one of five in the expanded, luxuriously appointed interior. The bed they were given was a Queen size and amply large enough for them.

When he woke that morning, it was to find himself alone. Luna's side of the bed was cold; Harry dragged himself out after turning off the alarm and stumbled to the shower, struggling to understand why he felt so tired and sore.

He finally made it out of the bathroom and out into the back porch. Despite the nice, cool interior Ollivander seemed to take delight in being outside, and with charms over the spacious patio, Harry did not blame him. Already breakfast platters were laid out on the patio table. Luna and Esmeralda's daughter, Mary, were having an in-depth discussion of how American mainline education worked. Mainly, this consisted of Mary talking about her classes and teachers while she ate eggs and chorizo wrapped in a flour tortilla.

Mary was far too young to realize it, but to Harry's eyes Luna looked awful—dark circles hung under her eyes and her hair hung limply about her drooped shoulders. He sat down and rubbed his face, feeling exhausted himself.

Ollivander sat at the end of the table and looked wisely at the two teens. Eventually, Esmeralda came back out and chased her daughter out to make it to the bus stop in time. When they were gone, Ollivander said, "So, happy ten-day anniversary, you two."

Harry blinked, struggling for a moment to realize what the old wizard meant. Luna, of course, already knew. Then it hit him—the initial bonding was over. The emotional rush of the bond was gone, and… "So that's why I feel like I drank too much Firewhisky last night?"

"Indeed," Ollivander said. "The two of you have been on a magically induced, emotional-high for the past ten days. It is always hard to come down from that high. Just remember—both of you are feeling it. Just as both of you were responsible for bonding in the first place. Do not be harsh with each other. Rather, I would suggest you simply give each other some space for the next few days until you feel better. Then, you'll be able to get to know each other under normal circumstances."

"Does it get better?" Harry asked.

Ollivander shrugged. "It depends on how close the two of you become, Mr Potter. In my mind, bonds were always manipulative. I know magically and biologically why they form, of course. An evolutionary throw-back to when it took a bond like that for a witch to hold any wizard down long enough to procreate and raise children. Still, it seems artificial and thus unsatisfactory to me. Better, I believe, to develop true feelings for your beloved with time and mutual interest. Hopefully, as mutual aethers, the two of you will find many common interests to pursue."

"Like wandmaking?" Harry asked, trying to force a smile.

Luna tried to match it, but both teens failed.

"We'll see," Ollivander said.

After two long, painful days spent working on wands, and two nights spent in separate beds, Harry thought he was going to go mad. It came almost as a relief when the Eastern Confederation attacked.

It happened in broad daylight, while Harry, Luna and the old wand maker stood in the back yard at the man's work table. They were not making wands; rather he was teaching them how to identify which cores would go best with which types of wood. Harry was astounded, even shocked, at the sheer number of woods available for wandmaking. Fortunately, Ollivander gave him the tools to gauge wood by their characteristics rather than forcing him to memorize every single kind.

"That is a skill that takes more time to learn than we have, Mr Potter," Ollivander said. "Witches apprentice for thirty years before they are allowed to make wands on their own. Even with an ordering potion, it would take too long."

Harry gulped and nodded his acceptance of that fact. He definitely did not have thirty years.

So, over the first week and a half of their stay Ollivander walked him and Luna through the process of making wands. They practised using false cores, since the real cores were far too valuable to waste on practice. The wooden blanks, though, were real enough. The shaping of the blanks was not actually that difficult, at least not for Harry. He found he had a mild talent in shaping the blanks with the small metal tools Ollivander used, since one could not use magic during the manufacture of a wand.

Luna's shaped blanks, however, tended to be…unusual. In fact, her first effort looked suspiciously…"What's the word for something that looks like a man's willy?" Harry finally asked.

Ollivander, who was looking at Luna's blank with wide eyes, chuckled and said, "Phallic, Mr Potter. Your young wife's first attempt is rather phallic in appearance."

Luna, looking as always slightly surprised, stared at the wandmaker and shrugged. "I'm not sure why I made it like this," she admitted.

"In the ancient days of the Norsemen, before they spread out into England and the world, wands were solely the purview of women," Ollivander explained. "In fact, it was rather sinful for men to even touch a wand, and any who did were killed. But then, it is said, the wise God Odin handled magic with a wand, making it allowable for wizards. That was when the witches of the Norselanders discovered what wands did to wizards, and how those wands changed the nature of magical bonding. It was less than a century later that Rowena the Saxon brought wands into the court of Vortigern and started the revolution that would change the world. Given your complexion, you are undoubtedly of Saxon blood, so perhaps it was a magical memory."

"What does that have to do with Luna's Willy-Wand?" Harry asked.

"All Norse wands from before they allowed men to use them were shaped like that," Ollivander said, nodding to the object in Luna's hand. "They are powerful, yes, but wholly unusable by wizards. Regardless of how she imbibed it, or what core she used in it, it would still not willingly serve a man. I'm afraid, my dear, that you would make a good wandmaker for witches, but in the task at hand you will find limited success."

"Oh, bother," Luna said. "Still, I rather like it. Can I keep it?"

"Luna!" Harry said, burning red.

Luna stared frankly at him. "It's not as if we're sharing a bed any more, Harry."

Harry stuttered—the statement sounded to him both angry and hurtful, something he never imagined from her before. Meanwhile, Ollivander was laughing at her earlier joke. "Mr Potter," the old wizard said, "why ever do you think the witches of old shaped their wands like that in the first place? Sex has always had a role in magic; being embarrassed of it is a Christian trait. Now, moving on…"

The worst part of the process was imbibing the blank, as Ollivander called it. They used old urine samples from some of Morgan Murchison's wizard-warriors and soaked the wood thoroughly, using Muggle latex gloves. "Before latex, we used acromantula silk gloves," Ollivander said. "It is best not to touch the blank during the imbibing process."

"Because it's gross?" Harry asked.

"Because it muddles the magic," Ollivander said, smiling. "And, yes, it is quite disgusting. I often wonder if it is the Hufflepuff witches who insist on keeping it secret."

"How do you…imbibe a blank with…faeces." It took Harry a moment to think of the proper word.

"Very carefully," Ollivander said. Luna giggled—the old wizard actually reminded Harry a great deal of Luna in the way his default expression was an absent smile, even if he was not feeling well. "It is best to mix it with water, which is a closely aligned element. However, truly the most difficult of the humours to work with is phlegm."

Harry thought about it and shrugged. "Doesn't seem to be worse than urine or faeces."

"The problem is getting enough out of a wizard or witch to actually complete the process, Mr Potter," Ollivander said. "Quite often we have to resort to a potion that stimulates mucus and saliva excretion, and even then it may take a day or two to extract enough to get the job done. Now, we store these overnight to let them soak through, and tomorrow we can work on core insertion, and what cores work best with which woods. What the devil…?"

Harry heard it then as well—the distant hum of motors. Like Ollivander, Harry looked up to see a large, twin-propeller plane flying almost directly over the trailer, inching across the clear blue sky in seemingly slow motion, though Harry knew it was going faster than the fastest broom could fly.

While he was staring at the plane, he saw shapes falling out of it, one after the other in quick succession. The shapes fell freely for a few beats of a heart before they began moving in tandem, falling into a V-shaped formation.

Broom riders.

They came with a loud battle cry of "_Morgana_!" and immediately started casting powerful explosive curses at the trailer. The air above the magically-expanded single-wide house exploded in a vast rainbow of scintillating colours as wards repelled the attack. As they grew closer, Harry was able to spot at least fifty witches and possibly even more than that.

While several witches stayed in the air pelting the wards of Ollivander's home with curses, three squads of three witches each alit on the ground at three evenly spaced points around the ward perimeter. Harry watched as each trio of black-robed witches removed a metal rod from a pack one carried. It looked odd for one witch to pull a six-foot long rod out of the foot-deep back pack of the witch in front of her. The rods were topped with large red crystals and ended in a sharp point on the other end. Each trio stabbed the rod into the ground, and almost immediately magic began to arc between the shields and the crystals.

"Hmmm, those are new," Ollivander said with a detached curiosity that did not alleviate Harry's or Luna's fears at all. "Ward sappers, by the looks. I also find it interesting they have given up on Portkeys. Morgan's Portkey wardline must be working."

Still talking, mainly to himself, the old wizard walked casually up to the ward line and stared intently at the rod from just feet away. "I say, are those rune crystals you're using?" he asked one of the attacking witches as if he were asking a stranger for the time.

"You're going to die, Apostate!" she shouted back at him in a distinctly Eastern American accent.

"Well, yes, I suppose eventually I will," Ollivander continued pleasantly enough, "but in the meantime would you mind telling me what type of crystal you're using?"

"Shut up!"

As scared as he was, Harry could see in the eyes of the attacking witches that the wandmaker's casual attitude toward the attack was worrying them. And then Harry saw why.

The wards seemed to blink, and then suddenly duplicated, with a second dome of warding energy shooting out from the first until it encompassed all the witches on the ground and in the air. Suddenly the grounds around Ollivander's property exploded with motion. Witches and wizards in Muggle military-style uniforms jumped up out of concealed holes or from the centre of carefully concealed blinds, at least a hundred in all. Seventy immediately launched into the air, most of whom were witches themselves with only a sprinkling of wizards.

Those on the ground, though…Harry stared in shock as a large, balding black man wielded a staff taller than Harry himself. The man pointed the staff from the waist, shouted a spell, and a blinding bolt of electricity arced from the twenty feet that separated him from the witch who shouted at Ollivander.

She did not even have time to scream. The bolt struck her chest and her body vaporized into a cloud so fast Harry barely had time to see her magic energy shoot straight up into the cloudless sky. Her two companions launched killing curses—Harry expected the staff-wielder to transfigure a barrier, but instead he ducked and rolled away while two of his wand-wielding companions erected an earthen barrier. He regained his feet, positioned the bulky staff, and shouted another spell. Another witch exploded.

Overhead, witches on brooms engaged in a vicious aerial battle, flinging lethal curses about without hesitation. From a purely professional eye, the flying was not that impressive, but then again Harry didn't have to fly while shooting curses at people trying to kill him, either.

Eventually, Harry calmed down enough to begin to think clearly. The fighting was completely lopsided. "This was a trap, then?" Harry asked when Ollivander walked back to him and Luna, and sank down at the patio table.

"Of course, my boy," Ollivander said. "Of course. It is the nature of wizarding warfare. The primary object of any magical force is to limit the mobility of your enemy. If you can stop Portkeys and apparition, you then have a chance to actually engage them in a stand-up fight. And as you can see, Morgan has some powerfully effective fighters."

"I've never heard of anyone using a staff before," Luna said.

"That's because they're not actually very useful outside of certain types of combat," Ollivander said. "Sergeant White there can throw around lighting, fire, wind and water with astounding power wielding that staff. Ask him to transfigure a needle or charm a teapot, and he'll laugh at you. Staves are too broad and blunt of a focus to be useful as anything but heavy artillery in large scale magical warfare, since they are so specialized they leave the wizard open to counter-attack. And even then they can only be employed by unreduced wizards."

"Unreduced?" Harry asked.

"Like yourself, Mr Potter—a wizard who has not had his magic drained by magical bonds. In Sergeant White's case—he wields one of my first wands since I came here, and so has not suffered from a reduction of magic when he bonded with his lovely wife. Think about it—we are one half of a nation, and the least populated half at that, and yet we have managed to hold off attacks from a good portion of the world. We have been attacked by forces as far away as France, Brazil and even England, and yet we still stand. Why do you think that is?"

"Male wands," Harry realized.

"Indeed. During the worst of Voldemort's reign, he had his wizards kill each other's bonded wives to free their power. That is the reason there are so few women in his organization—that and he has a deep hatred for witches in general. But it is ultimately a self-defeating tactic. Even he realized that without witches, there would be no next generation for him to rule. That's why he came after me. But even realizing their need, the man still has a deep-rooted hatred for the feminine."

"I know," Harry said sombrely. Even five years later, he grieved for Charity Burbage's death.

Ollivander, having heard Harry's tale, nodded. "Quite so, Mr Potter, quite so. But as you can see, nature has compensated for our lack of numbers by imbuing the typical wizard with a great deal more magical energy. Few learn to truly use it, of course, but those that do are impressive."

Ollivander paused and shook his head said. "So to your question, Mr Potter, yes, this was a trap. I have been bait before—there is a reason I live on this exact spot; it is a confluence of ley lines and a sacrificial site. When Morgan was helping me pick a place to live, we found this place by its residual magic. The Anasazi who lived here so long ago made at least some human sacrifice, at least of their witch-born. Hence this small house has wards as powerful as those of Hogwarts, which itself was built on the sacrifice of one child for each founder."

"That's not in _Hogwarts: A History_," Luna noted, wide-eyed.

"Perhaps not, but it is not entirely a secret," Ollivander said. He winced as Sergeant White finished off the last witch on the ground and started firing into the sky. Two witches stood on either side to protect him from counter attack. "You two of all people should know the power of blood wards. It is why Hogwarts has never fallen to a forcible conquest before."

Of the fifty or so attacking witches, fifteen flew off beyond the anti-apparition wards and disappeared with a series of cascading pops. When they were gone, voices immediately started calling out, "Medics! We need medics here!"

Mesmerized, Harry left the old wizard and Luna and walked to the edge of the wardline. The trailer was positioned North-to-South on the side of a low mountain littered with sage and creosote bushes. Spread in uneven intervals through the bushes he saw bodies, both those attacking witches in black robes, and those in the mottled fatigues of the Western forces. In the harsh, unrelenting sun of the New Mexico desert, Harry could clearly see blood on the rocky soil scattered around the fallen, horribly abused bodies.

"Does this happen very often?" Harry asked in a suddenly subdued voice.

Ollivander walked up beside him, and said softly, "No, thank Merlin, but it happens enough to be tragic. This is a significant battle, Harry. We are few enough that a fight with over a hundred combatants is considered a true battle, and this one we most definitely won, but there is always a price to be paid for fighting. You should learn it well, my boy, because I have no doubt you and your young wife will be fighting battles not so dissimilar from this in the near future. Come, we must offer what help we can."

Harry swallowed in a dry throat—he did not like wizard warfare at all.

Ollivander, having himself, Harry and Luna keyed to the wards, walked through the line easily enough. He moved to the first fallen witch—one in black robes—and checked her pulse. "She'll live," he said absently. "Mr Potter, would you be so good as to summon her arm?"

"_Accio_ arm!" Harry called without hesitation.

Instantly the woman's severed limb came flying from a nearby bush. Harry handed it to the other wizard who placed preserving charms on it, and then the unconscious woman's stump, before placing the arm across her chest.

"Why are we helping them if they're the enemy?" Harry asked.

Ollivander looked up from his work for a moment and studied Harry intently. "Mr Potter, just as we are so few that this is a significant battle, so true is it that we are so few every life is precious. I help this young woman in the hope that someday we may be reconciled as a nation, and she will remember this. I help her because she is in need, and I am able to help her. I do it because it is right."

Gulping, Harry nodded. "Yes, sir."

He and Luna made runs into the house for towels and bandages for those whose curses belayed field healing. He watched as the Western soldier wizards and witches levitated the bodies into a pile. Though most wore black robes, Harry saw with a lump in his throat that at least ten wore the mottled fatigues of the Western forces. "So many lost," he whispered aloud.

"And that was with surprise and overwhelming numbers on our side," a deep voice said behind where Harry knelt pressing a towel against a cursed witch's thigh.

Harry looked up in surprise to see Sergeant White standing behind him, holding the staff like a crutch. The right side of his shirt was matted against his skin with blood and he looked pale, though his magic shone brightly from his dark eyes—fiery, Gryffindor magic.

"Did they…" Harry forced a swallow. "This wasn't for me, was it, sir?"

"Sir? Boy, I work for a living. Call me Sarge. And no, this wasn't for you. We're at war, Potter. Been at war for over a century. We used you as bait to lure in an attack, and then pounded them. This wasn't for you."

Harry wasn't entirely sure why that made him feel better, but it did. "The staff, sir, is it really better?"

Sarge shrugged. "It's a tool, Potter, just like your wand. It can do some things well, and is useless at others. It's also illegal in every ICW-aligned country. As far as I know, only we and Japan employ them. And I only use it occasionally, in large engagements like this. In a one-on-one fight, this thing would get me killed if I didn't take out my opponent with my first curse."

The witch Harry was trying to help groaned—she was another Easterner in black robes, and her magic was distinctly Slytherin. Harry leaned down and gently flooded the freezing, constricted icy core with his own magic. The icy core melted, and the woman relaxed and slipped into a deep sleep. Sarge arched one brow but said nothing.

"Sarge, how's that curse?" a new voice said.

"Ollivander healed it, L.T.," he said after snapping off a quick salute.

L.T. proved to be a witch in those middling years that made it almost impossible to identify her exact age. She had a head of auburn hair bunched up in the back of her head with a long face. She had a long, lanky build to her. "Potter, you should be behind the wardline."

To Sarge, Harry whispered, "Do I call her 'sir'?"

"If you want your balls cursed off," Sarge whispered back with a wink and a grin. "Call her ma'am if you're smart."

Harry nodded. "Sorry, ma'am. I came out with Ollivander to help with the wounded."

"Right," the lieutenant said. She walked up to the fallen witch and cast a diagnostic spell with the same skill Madam Pomfrey showed. "Hmmm, she's been hit with a sleeping spell."

"That was Potter, L.T.," Sarge said. "Used some of that spooky Aether stuff."

The woman shook her head. "Right," She touched her wand to her throat. "Listen up, Fifth! I want all bodies evacuated in ten, full clean up." She turned to Harry and cocked one brow up. "Mr Potter, my name is Arlene Vance. You may know my cousin Emmaline, who chose to remain in England. I'll ask you to return to the wardline for now—we will contact you again soon regarding your security measures."

"Yes, ma'am," Harry said, instantly responding to the absolute tone of command in the woman's voice. She spoke with more authority than even McGonagall did, and his very magic wanted him to obey.

Five minutes later, all evidence of the battle was gone and Ollivander had them go back to making wand blanks as if nothing happened. Esmeralda never even realized a battle occurred. When Mary got home a few hours later, no one mentioned the vicious battle that occurred right around their home.

That night, Harry left his empty bed and stepped out under the half-light of the moon onto the back porch. Somehow, he was not surprised to find Luna sitting at the table staring up at the moon herself.

"Hello, Harry," she said softly, so as not to wake any others.

"Hello, Luna."

"Not sleeping well?"

"No, not really."

Luna nodded and said nothing else. "I find the moon to be quite beautiful. It seems larger here, though I know that it is just my imagination. It is the same moon whether over Britain or here. But it seems larger here regardless."

"Yeah." Harry sat beside her and fought hard not to look at her. She wore plain cotton pyjamas, and against the warm, soothing air of the night, he could see the tips of her nipples pushing against the fabric. "Luna, when are you going to come back?"

She shivered and hugged her knees to her chin. "I don't know. I need time. It wasn't really my idea for us to bond, you know. And I can't help but think we did it while too young. I just…need some time, please."

Thought it pained him, Harry nodded. "I miss you," he finally admitted.

She turned for the first time that night and stared at him with her large, silver-blue eyes. "Do you?" she asked, genuinely curious.

"Yes," Harry said.

"Well, I suppose that's something then." She stood, learned down to kiss his hair, and finally left. "Good night."

~~Firebird~~

~~Firebird~~

Two days later, Sergeant White appeared at the front door. Esmeralda let him in without comment, and the large wizard walked through the house to the back where Harry was struggling with his third failed blank of the morning. The art of threading the core into the blank was frustratingly difficult.

"Potter!" White shouted.

Harry threw the blank down, jumped out of his chair and pulled his own wand in a shaking hand.

"Not bad," White said with a tight grin. "Not good, but not bad. You have good instinct; you just need it trained into you for a bit."

"Sarge?"

"Morgan has decided your education has been lacking," Sarge said. "Welcome to the army, Potter. You've been enrolled in the Junior Mage Officer Corps!"

Harry swallowed in a suddenly dry throat. "The what?"

* * *

sp

sp

**Author's Note**: Very special thanks as always to Teufel1987, JR and Miles for beta reading. If there are any major faux-pas, they are entirely of my own doing.


	10. In The Army Now

A/N: Chap 9 Review Responses are in my forums as usual. Thank you for reading.

* * *

**Chapter Ten: In the Army Now**

Muggleborn witches were not important to the Ministry of Magic.

It was a terrible truth Director Amelia Bones hated, and she hated herself for acknowledging it. However, so many Muggleborn witches graduated Hogwarts, or for that matter the other ICW-aligned schools, and discovered that without a spouse there was simply no room for them in the magical world, that it was all but impossible to protect every single one. International law required them to be pulled out of their Muggle educational settings to learn to control their magic, but it was only since December of 1981, two months after the fall of Voldemort, that the ICW mandated continuing Muggle education for the Muggleborn. It was also law that any witch returning to the Muggle world be bound and fitted with a permanent veil. The truth was, at least since Amelia took over as DMLE, that rarely happened any more. She got away with letting those witches pass it because no one cared about Muggleborn witches.

At least with Dumbledore's changes, witches who returned to the Muggle world had a basic education with which to work. The ICW vote, Amelia thought, was Albus Dumbledore's greatest victory at the ICW, and it was a hard-won fight indeed. The old Headmaster used up a great deal of his political capital to ensure that Muggleborns had somewhere to go upon graduation—even if it was only to return to their parents' world.

It was with a sad acknowledgment of this fact that Amelia read the reports that had finally, after sixteen days from the initial disappearance, made it to her desk: three Muggleborn witches ranging in ages from 23 to 49 were missing, and in at least two cases the sites of their disappearance witnessed strong outbursts of accidental magic indicative of stress.

In the words of the Hit Witch who filed the report, "One Muggleborn is nothing. But three…three is a pattern. There might be a hunter abroad."

Hunters were nothing knew—the word was simply a catch-phrase for any aggressive Muggle attempts to capture, study or kill witches. It was certainly not unique—there were dozens of instances of Nazi hunters during the Second World War, both on the continent and in England. Hitler did not completely trust Grindelwald and directed his SS agents to abduct and aggressively study witch-born to find any weaknesses he could use against his supposed ally.

Even before then, however, developed nations occasionally became aware of the broader community of witch-born and attempted to destroy or capture them. A few killing curses and liberal uses of _Obliviates_ usually took care of the problem, except where it failed entirely.

There were nations in the world where witch-born were purged by sheer force of numbers. Magicals were never numerous to begin with in peoples of Middle Asian descent. She did not know of a single Arabic witch or wizard, and if any witch -born community ever formed in that area, it was quickly and brutally put down. Magical children were slaughtered at birth; the same was true through much of sub-Saharan Africa. The Muggle world decried such acts as the brutal acts of primitive cultures, but the truth was much more disturbing. The older peoples of the world were still in-touch enough with magic to recognize witch-born for what they were, and those whose culture decried such births dealt with them accordingly.

While such action was unthinkable in lands with established Magical Ministries, Amelia knew that there were thousands of Muggles for every single magical in the world. Granted, the developed nations had a higher concentration due to better nutrition and established ministries, but she knew if a true conflict every happened, it would be a nightmare for all. In Britain, for instance, there were easily a thousand Muggles for each Magical, and Britain due to a combination of history and circumstance had one of the highest pro-rata magical populations in the world. And even there, in the birthplace of modern magic, Muggleborn children were still occasionally killed by shocked, terrified parents.

With a new Minister loudly proclaiming that Voldemort was not back; with Covens loudly calling for the capture and execution of Harry Potter and his bonded, Luna Potter; with a Sabbat Order calling for the trials and immediate expulsion of Hermione Granger and Justine Finch-Fletchley from Hogwarts, if not their deaths, this one more horror just made Amelia wish she had taken a vacation through the whole of the summer months.

She walked now through the town of Consett in slacks and a blazer, tolerating the itchy discomfort of the veil with a slight frown, until she reached the town's supermarket. She was not surprised to find Tonks waiting for her there.

"Found him," she said casually. For the day Tonks wore her hair plain brown, and she wore ripped jeans and a T-shirt with a studded denim jacket. Being Amelia's primary information gatherer, dress code was not her first priority. "Donny Whitehead—he saw the whole thing."

The two witches walked into the Safeway store, passed down the produce aisle and walked without hesitation into the back room. "Employees only," a large, gruff Muggle said.

Amelia flashed her Auror's badge. The badge was charmed to show whatever would impress the viewer the most. The man blinked, took a step back and said, "Sorry, Ma'am. What can I do for you?"

"I need to speak to Donny Whitehead regarding your missing employee, Gertrude Appleby."

"Roit, he's in the lounge."

The young man in question sat in the back of the employee lounge of the store, his head in his hands and his elbows on his knees. He looked up as the two women entered and his red eyes widened. "I didn'a do it!" He started rambling incoherently while Tonks shut the door behind her.

"Mr Whitehead," Amelia said firmly to get him to quiet down. "My name is Amelia Bones. I just wanted to ask you a few questions, please."

After Tonks helped calm the young man down, Amelia sat in a folding chair facing him and started asking very basic questions about his family, his home, how he got on with his co-workers, and finally what he thought of Gertrude Appleby.

All the while, she grazed through the images in his head, employing subtle Legilimency to glean the truth from his words. What she saw chilled her. Finally, having obtained what she needed, she stood. "Thank you, Mr Whitehead. I believe you, that you were not responsible for her disappearance."

"I should'a stayed and 'elped her, though," he muttered miserably.

_Yes, you should have_, Amelia thought. "I'm sure she understood. _Obliviate_."

Afterward, leaving the store, Amelia shuddered despite herself. "Muggles," she said. "Well-armed. He watched the whole thing from a few hundred feet away, cowering behind a tree... Two men in suits, and two more in what looked like black military gear. The men in suits used what looked like one of those Muggle electric guns—the victim killed them both with accidental magic. Any word on Sandra Shatley?"

"No witnesses; she was seen entering her flat, and was not seen again. According to the local PC, there were signs of a struggle and several blown-out windows. She was a Ravenclaw, so her accidental magic might have been air-based."

"Who's the third?"

"Nancy Dubois, from Ashford."

"Let's go," Amelia said; and a second later both witches disappeared with a pop.

~~Firebird~~

~~Firebird~~

The nearest regional wizarding school to Ollivander operated out of Santa Fe, just over the ridge from Pecos. It served the whole Southwestern region, including Arizona, Utah, Nevada and Colorado. Even so, it still had an enrolment of less than five hundred students. The school itself was nothing special to look at. It was comprised of a long, single-story building with narrow windows deeply set in thick adobe walls. Unlike ICW schools, there was no bestiary, but there was a Quidditch pitch, even if it only had one goal on either side rather than three.

The structure was set in a vast, empty plain southwest of the city, a few miles away from the local Muggle Community College. The only green came from two long, cylindrical greenhouses on the far side of the school. The JMOC met on the odd Quidditch Pitch

Actual classes began on August 28th, but the Junior Magical Officer Corps mustered on August 21st to begin their training. From the description, Harry expected a whole regiment of a hundred students or more.

Despite his misgivings for that means of travel, he arrived by Portkey. He could have made the flight by broom in twenty minutes or less, but Ollivander insisted on it for security reasons. So, naturally when he landed, he lost his breakfast.

"Potter, what is wrong with you?" a harsh female voice shouted.

Harry looked up to see a group of six teenagers, his age or older, and one familiar woman with curly auburn hair and a lanky build, all staring at him. "Er, sorry," Harry said after vanishing the vomit and wiping his mouth. "Portkeys and I don't agree. It's an aether thing."

She cast an appraising look at him before nodding. "Are you recovered then?"

"Yes, ma'am."

"Good, fall in."

By that she evidently meant for him to stand in line with the other kids. "Right," Lieutenant Arlene Vance began. "As I was saying, you kids represent future officers in the WestCon army; you will be expected to lead and fight with the witches and wizards under your command. There are privileges that come with rank, but there are also heavy responsibilities. First and foremost is that you must be the best."

She walked up and down the line, hands clasped behind her back. "Many of you are First Gen, so you may have in your mind what this will be like from the Junior Reserve Officer Training Corps in normal schools. However, if you notice, there is no 'Reserve' in the name of this program. This is your officer training, and upon achieving your NEWTs you _will_ be serving officers of the WestCon army. What you learn here will save your lives."

Harry never even got the names of the other cadets before Vance had them all running laps on a dusty half-mile track around the pitch. Vance followed easily behind, pelting stragglers with stinging charms to encourage them to speed up. Fortunately, after a year in hard physical training, Harry was not too far behind the leader—a tall, wiry blond boy who reminded him in appearance a little of Ron.

They stopped after a five mile run; Harry felt pushed to the edge, but was surprised at how well the others kept up. "We are witch-born," Vance barked loudly when she had them back in line. "We are physically stronger than our Muggle-counterparts because of our magic. Magic saturates our muscles on a cellular level, providing increased healing, strength and recovery time. Your body can operate solely on magic for prolonged periods of time if necessary. That is why there will be no water breaks during our training sessions. You may crave water, but your body can function without it."

The lecture continued as the cadets struggled to catch their breath. After the warm-up run, Vance transfigured a mound of Earth with round targets spaced at one-foot intervals and had them practice shooting stunners.

As they fired again and again at the targets, Vance walked behind the barrier and disappeared—to everyone except Harry. To his eyes, she appeared to shimmer and go transparent, while around her silvery magic trickled down around her like water. He saw her point her wand at him and raised a shield before the stunner even left her wand.

The others stopped their work and stared at his shield.

"Nicely done, Potter," Vance said in a surprisingly normal tone. "Do you know what I did?"

"A disillusionment charm, Ma'am," Harry said. "I…well, I saw you anyway."

Rather than be surprised, Vance merely nodded. "Aether magic is very rare in the Americas, more so than in other countries. It is hereditary, and none of the magical families with known aethers immigrated. I understand your wife is also an aether?"

At the word 'wife' the other cadets stared incredulously, but Harry tried to ignore them for the older witch. "Yes, ma'am. We bonded at a glance; if I encounter any other aethers, there is the risk of an unintentional bonding, so we have to employ Occlumency."

"Good. Kids, this is Harry Potter, newly arrived from England. Yes, he is bonded—you know the Brits do things just like the EastCon people do, or the Brazilians, so it shouldn't be a shock that he's bonded already. However, he is unreduced regardless."

"Ma'am?" the wiry blond boy said, raising his hand.

"Yes, Cadet Lieutenant Coles?"

"Is he the same Potter that won the Junior Quidditch World Championship last year?"

Harry stared in shock—the Western Confederation knew about the tournament?

"One and the same," Vance said with a grin. "Some of the finest damned flying I've ever seen. He and his bonded are here as the personal guest of President Murchison. You _will_ make him feel welcome while he stays with us, understand?"

The others nodded.

"Right, dismissed. Report back this afternoon at five. Potter, your Portkey will take you back in ten minutes."

"Yes, ma'am, thank you."

Coles stepped forward and offered a hand. "Tim Coles, nice to meet you."

Coles' elemental leaning was fire, just like Harry's. He stared at the hand, unaccustomed to such greetings, but took it after only a moment's hesitation. Both boys started at the shock of magic, but Coles laughed it off and pointed to a girl by his side. "This is Cadet Sergeant Myra Wickers."

Wickers looked like an average brunette with a constellation of freckles across her face and a somewhat long nose. She didn't offer her hand, though she smiled at him in a friendly enough fashion. "Married, huh? How'd that work?"

Harry shrugged. "I blew out my wand and our Sabbat said I was too powerful, so they ordered me to bond by fifteen, or they'd make me bond. I had a choice between a girl in my school or …well, you know."

"It's shit like that which makes me want to fight," the second boy in the group said. He was a short black boy with an earthen leaning in his magic, just like Myra Witckers. "Name's Daniel Michaels."

The blonde girl smiled at him and said, "Mary Stiller." She, like Coles, was fiery.

The last two girls were both shorter than the rest. The first of them had a wide, oval face with pale green eyes and brown hair. "Suzanne Tso," she said. Her magic was not just Earthen, but possibly the most Earthen of any Hufflepuff he'd ever seen.

Her friend appeared to be East Asian. "Bernadette Nguyen," she said. She was the only Air-elemental of the group.

"Nice to meet you all," Harry said, grinning. "I'll try not to throw up on you next Portkey in."

"Why is that?" Coles asked.

"I can see the magic that carries me," Harry said. "It's like being shot by rainbow guns and twisted around inside. I wish I could just fly here, but there's a security risk."

"How 'bout your wife?" Wickers asked. "Is she joining?"

Harry smiled sadly, thinking of how long it had been sine he and Luna even really just talked. "She's not the military type. She's a Ravenclaw…I mean, an air elemental, like Bernadette. I don't know many air elementals that fight."

"I don't really want to," Bernadette admitted. "But I sort of have too. There's a family draft, and my sisters couldn't fight themselves. If I signed up for JMOC, the rest of my family are exempted. And…wait, how did you know what my leaning is?"

Harry smiled. "I'm an aether—I can see your magic. I see yours too, Suzanne; I've never seen such a strong Earthen leaning before."

Bernadette scratched her chin. "I'm Diné, what you people call Navajo. We are all children of the Earth."

"Oh, well, I guess that explains it. Well, it's about time. See you this aftern…" And suddenly he was gone.

~~Firebird~~

~~Firebird~~

After a long session of wand-making with Ollivander and a reticent Luna, Harry returned for the afternoon muster. Unlike the morning training, the afternoon was dedicated to learning tactics and specialized combat magic. Harry was especially excited when Vance announced apparition lessons.

"Mobility is the key to magical warfare," she lectured as she had them line up to practice the three D's of apparition: _Destination, Determination and Deliberation. _One must be completely determined to reach one's destination, and move without haste, but with deliberation. Their target was a hoop three feet in front of them.

"The difference between victory and death is whether you are mobile or not," Vance said. "A few days ago, the WestCon army scored a major victory right here in New Mexico when we trapped an attacking force of fifty-four witches in an anti-apparition and anti-Portkey ward. They were trapped and unable to escape or regroup—we killed or captured forty of them before they managed to fly on brooms outside the ward perimeter. That's the most enemy taken in a battle since Chicago. Mobility was the key—in this case, limiting the attacker's mobility."

Harry did listen, but only with a part of his mind. Instead he was staring intently at the hoop, thinking to himself that if he could master this skill, he wouldn't have to use Portkeys anymore. Desire fuelled his magic, and with a sliding feeling, as if the whole Earth had turned sideways, he found himself standing in the hoop.

Vance stopped mid-sentence. "Hmm ... Well done, Potter. Have you had lessons before?"

"No, ma'am. In England they don't even allow us to take lessons until Seventh Year, unless your birthday falls really early in the school year."

"I see. Try again, will you?"

Harry stepped out of the hoop, conscious of the other students watching him, and stared intently at the hoop. This time he leaned against the side-ways fall, and stepped into the hoop without losing his balance at all.

"That's _not_ apparition," Mary Still said. "There was no pop!"

"Oh, it is, just not the standard type," Vance said with a wry grin. "Apparition is a function of the three Ds, yes, but those are couched within a very basic tenant—desire. Your desire fuels your magic, and practice allows you to shape that desire more easily to achieve your goals. However, the means by which your magic accomplishes your goals varies. Mr Potter employed something known as Side-step Apparition. It is unique to visual aethers, though I only know that because Garrick Ollivander told me to expect it. It is still apparition—subject to all the same rules and limitations, it is just silent. The rest of you keep working. You, Mr Potter, need to practise as well. Try Apparating around the Quodpot field."

Harry nodded, not even bothering to hide his pleased grin.

By the time class ended, Coles and Nguyen had both successfully Apparated as well, while the other four came close. "Potter, do you wish to try Apparating to your home?"

"Could I?" Harry asked eagerly.

"Yes, but I'm going along separately to ensure you make it in one piece."

She disappeared; Harry waved goodnight to the other students before he followed along, visualizing Ollivander's pool. It was astonishingly easy, and he appeared without a pop…

…Right over the pool.

He had just a moment to gulp in a breath of air before he plummeted right into the water. When he managed to make it to the edge, he heard Luna laughing delightedly while Ollivander and Vance both looked on with raised brows.

"It's good not to get cocky, Potter," Vance said. "Apparition is not without risk. Splinch yourself, and you'll understand. Well, Mr Ollivander, I think he can safely Apparate to training tomorrow. There is no water at the school for him to fall into."

"Indeed. Thank you, Lieutenant. Have a pleasant evening."

With that, the lieutenant disappeared, while Harry applied a drying charm. "It's not funny, Luna," Harry grumped.

"Oh, but it is, Mr Potter," Ollivander said. "You just need some distance to appreciate the humour. In the meantime, come eat. We have a most fabulous dinner waiting."

~~Firebird~~

~~Firebird~~

So went the rest of the week before school started. The three hour morning sessions concentrated on physical exercise and drills to practice both offensive and defensive magic, as well as different techniques to dodge such spells. The three hour session in the late afternoon was devoted to the theories, rituals and skills of being an officer.

It was a different experience for Harry, and for the first time he found himself truly enjoying his lessons. Because of the small number of actual combatants, each officer was required to know hand-to-hand combat _and _field healing magic, and that was Harry's favourite subject.

However, reading about the past century of warfare fascinated Harry as well. Because the Western Confederation was virtually unmentionable, Harry never learned of the Missoula Accords of 1941, in which the two sides of the American conflict declared a truce for the duration of the Second World War. This allowed both sides to enter the war with other Allied witch-born to fight the greater threat.

Most interesting, though, was how well the EastCon and WestCon forces worked together, employing tactics learned against each other on Grindelwald's forces with astounding success, until Dumbledore stepped in at the last to cut off the head of an already dying snake.

The WestCon also had a unique view of Voldemort. At the beginning, he was depicted as a fellow revolutionary and freedom fighter; however as the British insurrection continued, he devolved from hero to villain, targeting true innocents as well as what the WestCon considered viable targets, until he was simply a murderer with a gang.

"Actually, he was worse than that," Harry muttered.

"What was that, Cadet Potter?" Vance asked.

Harry looked up in surprise, having not realized he spoke aloud. "Sorry, ma'am. Just had a thought."

"Share it, please," Vance said in a tone that made it an order. "Your insights on Voldemort are much more pertinent than ours."

"Well, it's just, at the end he was a tool for the Dark Covens of the Sabbat," Harry said. "It was a Dame who sent him after my mum, and there was another Dame there when he regained a body in June. The Covens used him against their enemies, and Mum was one of the ones they wanted dead the most."

Vance nodded grimly. "Yes, Mr Ollivander has mentioned Lily Potter—I never met her, but my cousin Emmeline has. My parents left England right after the first World War, before either of us were born."

She looked to the rest of the wide-eyed cadets then back to Potter. "Learn this stuff well, Potter, because of all the kids in this school, I suspect you'll have greater need of it than anyone."

"I think you're right, ma'am," Harry agreed earnestly.

For all that he enjoyed his lessons, though, it always dulled the day's sense of accomplishment to come back to Ollivanders and have Luna avoid him. Most times, she would not even look at him even if they were working together. He just sighed and went to be alone.

~~Firebird~~

~~Firebird~~

On the Saturday before he and Luna were scheduled to restart their schooling in America, Harry woke up once more alone.

Esmeralda Gutierrez strode into the room like a bull elephant, both metaphorically and physically, seeing as she out massed Harry almost three-to-one. "Up, lazy bones!" she snapped in heavily accented English. "Luna is already up."

"I'm up, I'm up!" Harry said, and he was.

The huge woman eyed him with narrow eyes. "Why do you not sleep with your wife? She was crying by the pool again this morning."

Harry slumped his shoulders and rubbed his face. "She doesn't really want me."

"She married you!"

"Didn't have a choice, really," Harry said. "Sometimes our magic makes us do wonky things."

"Wonky?" Esmeralda chuckled. "You English talk _loco_. Wonky. Like that. Come on, then."

Harry padded barefoot out of the house in his pyjama bottoms and one of Dudley's old T-shirts. Breakfast was on the back patio, where Ollivander and his adopted family spent most of their time.

Maria, Esmeralda's Squib daughter, was dressed for the weekend and was planning to spend the day with a friend down the street. A car horn blaring from the front was her cue that her ride had arrived.

"Oh!" Maria said, wide-eyed. "Bye, Papa!" She gave the ancient wizard on her other side a peck on the cheek, hugged her mum, and then hugged Luna as well. "Bye, Harry!" she called as she ran past the boy, her bag flopping against her back.

Harry sat down as the girl left the large home, which from the street looked like a single-wide trailer. "Good morning, Mr Potter," Ollivander said expansively. "Help yourself, please. As always, dear Esmeralda outdid herself."

Harry had never heard of "migas" before arriving in America, but he had come to love the concoction of eggs, cheese, peppers and onions mixed with crushed tortilla strips. Yesterday it was sausage burritos, and before that _chilaquilas_.

"I believe we shall take today off," Ollivander said. "Lieutenant Vance reported you've been working hard this week, and I, for one, see that for myself. Even Morgan is impressed, and that man does not impress easily. You have the makings of a find wandmaker, if I do say so myself, and if Lieutenant Vance is to be believed, a fine officer.

"In fact, I was thinking now that you've mastered apparition so well, the two of you should go into Santa Fe for some clothes shopping," Ollivander continued. "You especially, Mr Potter. Esmeralda's cooking has obviously agreed with you—you've grown at least an inch."

Harry flushed. "Sure, that's a good idea, I suppose."

"I think I should rather stay here, thank you," Luna said with a distant smile as she nibbled on a fresh tortilla.

"Perhaps," Ollivander said. "On the other hand, I think it rather important that you go together." The old wizard sat up. "Children, I have been bonded before. It was my first wife, in fact, who introduced me to Gregorovitch; it was that act of faith that cost her life and put my feet on the path of resistance I follow today. However, like many young wizards our marriage came about through poaching. She seduced me, and I was young and foolish enough to let her. Marriage in the magical world is not always easy. Bonds do not mean love, nor even like. But like it or not, you are joined." Ollivander looked hard at Luna. "Trying to resist the bond will only make you feel bad, my dear. Do you truly think Mr Potter here has been a bad spouse?"

Pouting in an adorable but childish fashion, Luna shook her head. "I just miss my Daddy," she finally said in a weak voice. "I miss my home, and Hogwarts. "

Ollivander took the witch's hand, knowing what contact did for witch-born. "Morgan is speaking with the ICW for you both, but we can't let you go without being assured of your safety. In the meantime, making yourselves miserable does no one any good. Go to town together, buy some clothes for yourselves. You have the credit card Morgan set up for your expenses while you are here, yet you've not spent a dime of it. Do so, my dears. Have a day out together, like a date."

Luna blinked at that, and looked over at Harry. "A date?"

Harry scratched at the thin whiskers on his chin. "Sure, why not?" he said. "I think it might be fun."

Luna's smile looked a touch stronger as she said, "I would like that."

From Ollivander's back porch, Harry tossed his invisibility cloak over the two of them before Harry side-along Apparated Luna to the parking lot of Santa Fe's largest shopping mall. "That was not nearly as bad as I feared," she said after they confirmed no one was there to see and removed his cloak.

"Vance called it side-step apparition, something unique to us. It beats a Portkey."

Being very thoroughly pale and British despite the time they spent in America, the two received a few odd looks when they entered the mall, but no one actually bothered them. He was absolutely sure they were being discreetly watched by Morgan's people, but he didn't mind.

Harry wasn't sure whose idea it was, but at some point he and Luna started holding hands as they walked. The touch thrilled him, and he could see her magic respond the same. She smiled briefly at him before pulling him toward a clothing store.

They ate pizza for lunch, and that afternoon went to see a Muggle motion picture. It was Luna's very first time in a Muggle cinema, and she sat throughout the otherwise forgettable movie with a gaping jaw and wide eyes. Eventually, when the shock of the screen wore off, she leaned against his shoulder and the two watched snuggled together.

Finally, though, the day wound to a close. As part of their agreement with the Western Confederation, they were required to be back in Ollivander's home by dark each day. Realizing they were both guests, and guessing they were being watched by Murchison's people, neither teen had a desire to test their boundaries.

Walking back into the parking lot to Apparate, Luna said, "Harry?"

"Yes?"

"That was a most lovely date. Thank you."

"Thank you for coming," Harry said. "Never been on a date before myself; it was nice."

She leaned against him. "I want to go home, Harry."

He knew she spoke of England, but he said nothing because he wasn't sure he wanted to. He loved the huge, expansive skies that dominated this land. He loved the tree-covered mountains that rose up like islands in a sea of desert. He loved the dry air and the bright sun and the migas in the morning. He loved…not being afraid. As much as he hated to admit it, he was terrified of returning to England.

Luna hugged him tighter, sensing the disquiet in his magic, and with a side-ways fall they Apparated back to Pecos.

That evening, when Harry finished brushing his teeth and slipping on his pyjamas, he left the small en suite bathroom to find Luna perched on the edge of the queen-sized bed Ollivander had given over to them. Normally she slept in Maria's room, but tonight she sat on the edge of the bed, her hands clutched tightly between her knees, staring at him with her huge silver-blue eyes.

Harry's breath caught in his throat and he felt himself responding to the sight of her in her thin cotton pyjamas. "Could I stay in here tonight?" Luna asked.

He crossed the room to sit next to her and pulled her into a hug. "I never wanted you to go in the first place," he said softly. "I've missed you."

"You never said anything, so I thought you were happy I was gone," Luna said. She wiped a wet cheek.

"I didn't know I was supposed to say anything," Harry admitted. "I thought…I thought you just didn't like being with me."

Luna snorted in a rather unfeminine fashion. "In Witch's Health, Professor Hooch said it was normal for wizards to get angry after the bonding period is done and they realize how much their magic has dropped."

"Well, you didn't cause my magic to drop, did you?" Harry said.

"And I know that I'm not as pretty as Hermione or…."

He stopped her with a kiss. When he pulled away, her lips were slightly parted and her eyes half-closed; their bond throbbed with the power of their mutual magic reaching for each other. "You are beautiful, Luna," Harry said firmly. "No, you don't look like Hermione or Justine or anyone else for that matter, but by Merlin you're beautiful, and I won't have you say any different!"

Her eyes were wide, and a blush was rising up her cheeks and down her chest as their magic pushed and merged together. "Harry?"

"Yes?"

"Do you think maybe, someday, you might come to love me the way daddy came to love my mum?"

"Yes," Harry said without hesitation. "I think it's very, very likely." On a sudden impulse, he scooped her up in his arms and carried her to the side of the bed away from the door, and with a Seeker's balance used one foot to kick away the covers before he placed her gently on the mattress. He started to walk to his side when her hands caught his and pulled him down onto her.

"That's good," she whispered as she kissed him urgently. "Because I do believe I'm coming to love you a great deal."

* * *

sp

sp

**Author's Note**: Very special thanks as always to Teufel1987, JR and Miles for beta reading. If there are any major faux-pas, they are entirely of my own doing.


End file.
